Editor’s note: Jennifer Gratz was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Gratz v. Bollinger which challenged affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has since led efforts against racial preferences. Gratz graduated from the University of Michigan, Dearborn, with a degree in mathematics in 1999.

By Jennifer Gratz, Special to CNN

(CNN) - There is a short phrase, just four words, inscribed up above the main entryway into United States Supreme Court, “Equal Justice Under Law.”

I took note of this inscription on April 1, 2003, when my case, Gratz v. Bollinger, and a companion case, Grutter v. Bollinger, were heard by the high court. My case challenged affirmative action policies in admissions at the University of Michigan’s undergraduate school; Barb Grutter’s challenged affirmative action policies at the law school. By the time my case was heard by the Supreme Court the University of Michigan admitted that their affirmative action policy gave a 20 point boost to blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans on an admissions rating scale.

When I applied to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for admission in 1995, I thought it was my path to medical school. When I received a rejection letter, I ultimately reconsidered my career choice, and pursued a degree in math at another University of Michigan campus. My confidence was shaken.

The court’s inscription brought confidence as I sat listening to oral arguments on that cold spring day. After all, how could anyone – especially legal scholars – conclude that “equal” meant unequal?

I thought I was prepared to hear anything during those arguments, but I don't think anything can prepare you to hear your own name referenced by a Supreme Court justice, as if you are just a policy on paper. If I remember correctly, "Gratz" was referenced in the very first question asked that day.

Each time they mentioned my name, I wanted to jump out of my seat and say, "I'm sitting right here. I'm a real person."

Just after the oral arguments, I stood on the steps of the court fielding questions from reporters and pointing up at that inscription, “Equal Justice Under Law.” In the days between oral arguments and the decisions in the Gratz and Grutter cases, I hoped the words inscribed in the building - the words enshrined in our Constitution’s 14th amendment - mattered. I hoped that the Court would find that diversity and other equally good intentions did not trump my right, or anyone’s right, to be treated equally and without regard to skin color by public institutions.

The Supreme Court handed down its split-decision in the Michigan cases on June 23, 2003. I won my case against the University of Michigan, but because the court upheld race preferences at the law school, I believed there was little to celebrate. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor penned the 5-4 decision in Grutter, letting state-sanctioned racial discrimination continue for one reason only - to promote racial diversity on college campuses. The court acknowledged that race preferences were discriminatory and a majority agreed that one day this discrimination should be unconstitutional. O’Connor even wrote that she hoped these policies would no longer be necessary by 2028. Talk about a kick to the gut, government sanctioned discrimination in the form of race preferences was allowed to continue in order to promote the “common good.”

Abigail Fisher’s challenge to race preferences in admissions at the University of Texas will be heard by the Supreme Court this fall. I’ve never met her, but I know what it’s like to feel the sting of discrimination and be told it was for the “common good.” I know what it’s like to wonder if the very people who talk about the “common good” would sit idly if their sons and daughters were discriminated against by universities and other public entities for the sake of diversity.

Finally, I know what it’s like to hear the empty talking point that “women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action,” failing to acknowledge that it has been women who have championed the cause of equal treatment without regard to race for the last three decades. Cheryl Hopwood challenged it in the 1990s against the University of Texas, which set-up Fisher’s new challenge. Katuria Smith challenged the University of Washington in the late 1990s. Barb Grutter and I challenged the University of Michigan in the 2000s.

Before the court hears arguments in Fisher’s case, I hope the justices notice that a lot has happened since Gratz and Grutter were decided.

Immediately following the Michigan decisions, I uprooted my life, resigned from a great job in the software industry and started the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a statewide ballot initiative that asked Michigan voters to decide if race preferences should continue at the University of Michigan. Overwhelmingly, Michiganders voted to neuter O’Connor’s ruling in the Grutter case, making state-sponsored discrimination unconstitutional in the Wolverine state.

Arizona, Nebraska and New Hampshire followed Michigan’s lead and Oklahoma is poised to ban race preferences this November. A critical mass, 27% of the population, now resides in states where race preferences have been banned by voters. California, Washington and Florida banned race preferences prior to the Michigan decisions.

My hope for Abigail Fisher is that when the justices reference the name Fisher, they don’t see an ambiguous, seemingly benign affirmative action policy on paper, but that they visualize a young woman whose dreams were dashed because of discrimination sanctioned by the state. I hope they see a young woman who is fighting for her right to equal treatment under the law. In 2012 it is long past time that the court follows those four words inscribed in the Supreme Court building and rules that equal means equal.

Stop cryin'........White men have been given a free pass all their life and now that you have to stand on your own two feet you finally realize what the black man already know.....you don't measure up. No one believes in white power. Its obvious to all that your position in this world is shrinking rapidly right before your eyes. You have no one to blame but yourselves. Look at how the media portrays you in commercials, sitcoms,movies, etc......your looked at as a loser, over weight, weak, insecure, unattractive to white women, basically unimportant in everyday white peoples lives. Your kids all want to be black. You know it and I know it. Don't get me started on sports. But it is funny to hear white men complain like !@* on hear about not being treated fairly. I can understand white women to some degree. The forefathers of this country must be rollin' in their graves to see what white men have done to this country. I have often wondered what so many white women see when they look at white men. They know that they have to basically settle with a whiteman because thats what society expects, but I know alot of white women dream of being with a black man. White women see you at work. They read your post. They can see your face. They see how weak white men have become. I've had these conversations with white women and they all say the same thing. Alot of them would date a black man, but are afraid of what society will say. White men have had, and still do have more than any other race known to mankind. Yet here your are......compainin' about being treated unfairly.

You realize that affirmative action is WAYYY more racist toward blacks & minorities than non- preferential treatment is right?

Imagine this scenario:

The college you apply for has a "mandatory" (or lets say average) GPA of 3.5

You a person in the minority race/gender has a GPA between 2.9 and a 3.2

The college looks at your application and during it's decision says ...."well this individual only has a GPA that is about.4-.5 points lower than our student average....but he/she is a minority,,,they cannot possibly do any better....so we accept"

How is that not more racist? You are being treated to a special set of rules...the MAN is telling you that you cannot physically do as good

I remember not being able to play on the baseball field because it was for boys only. I remember picking rocks out of a field so we could play there. I remember not being able to pursue a career because we would be taking the job away from men. I remember colleges for men only. We have come a long way since then. We have fought the fight for our daughters and granddaughters, but the fight must continue to make equal really mean equal.

Hopefully, Jennifer will read your post and understand that the social climate she enjoys today is very different that generations before her (who are still alive). She may have an appreciation of mathematics, but Ms. Gratz does not seem to understand that but for the struggles of those before her, her degree could have been in matressmatics, instead of mathematics.

For a college professor, you sure do exaggerate a lot.🙂 What university, you say? First, for this thought exercise, let us assume that the minimum score possible for a university to rate itself at is 7,000 and the maximum score is 10,000. First, public State universities with large main campuses will always be higher than smaller branch campuses. Case in point, the University of Maine at Orono versus the University of Maine at Augusta. These schools may both be in the University of Maine System, but they are vastly different in scale, student body population, resources, and degrees offered. Next, in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, schools such as Michigan, Michigan State, The Pennyslvania State University, and Temple (Temple is a semi-public/private) would be upper tier for state schools (all schools not listed), but their branch campuses and schools like Grand Valley State University and West Chester University would have similar ratings (within 250 points).

What did I exaggerate about? Regarding my employer, I'm leaving them out of this conversation since the statements are mine and not my theirs. Suffice it to say that it's a state university with a wide range of students, some of which could be top students at any school and others who would clearly have been better off with remedial classes before getting to me. When I was in college, there were remedial classes for the students who, e.g., didn't have enough competence in math to take the core classes. They've phased that out since, and my current employer has no such program available.

Ever since you were given freedom, I have lost ground in 1 st and 2nd amendment . Your propensity for violence and over sensitivity has caused this errosion. You have eroded the minds of white youth with your "culture" of rap, lack of accountability, pants around your azz werd style is worse than drugs

get over yourselves, you know the jig is up. The liberal vail can't protect or perpetuate the lie anymore.

Personally, I have decided that DDuke is just trying to instigate, and really doesn't hold any beliefs on either side of the position of either AA in general, or racism in particular. His goal is to PO people, and see what happens. I recommend ignoring him from now on.

There is a difference between killing and murder. The law decides what is considered murder; as murder is a legal term. Therefore, in the states where the death penaly is legal it cannot be called murder.

The time has past for racial preferences. The notion of 'catching up' is no longer valid. Blacks had decades to take advantage of preferential admissions, scholarships, and other programs.. Those opportunities were largely wasted. Their communities failed to encourage education, their organizations failed them and their culture defeated attempts at change.
It's high time everyone stand up on their own 2 feet and fend for themselves.
Lest you think me some redneck consider this: my father was shot by the klan while helping blacks to register to vote in Miss. 1963, I was part of many civil rights demonstrations(beaten and jailed) in the '60-'70s. Don't dismiss me out-of-hand. We did what we could and it was largely wasted.

It was largely wasted because it was incomplete. Just getting in wasn't enough; there had to be mechanisms in place to help with the problems they'd deal with throughout, too. The Posse Foundation today shows just how it should've been done back then, and I've yet to see a better model of how to deal with the problems inherent in being disadvantaged.

Jennifer Gratz, why don't you advocate for a national, legal definition of qualified. Take the power out of universitys' hands. Make admissions first come first served based on national, standardized, end of year high school tests. No SAT/ACT, CLEP, AB/AP....nothing but the subjects the end of year tests. No activities, nothing. No names on the applications, just codes. No essays either.

For a long time the U.S. government and educational systems suppressed the advancement of minority races and women. Affirmative action is a result of trying to undo decades of discrimination. I agree that this policy should eventually be done away with but for now it is an entirely appropriate and fair policy.

Wow, not even one of my comments – save a reply to someone else's comment – has been posted by the fine "comments are not pre-screened before they post" folks at CNN. Not a vulgar or inappropriate word in any of them. Yet others have been allowed to post overtly anti-(pick a race) comments. Hmm.

Their is no rationality in CNN's censorship. I know that sometimes it is ruled by an auto-censor program which is clearly designed to look out for offensive language. While it is sometimes frustrating to deal with (especially when one is trying to comment on an article on something like s3xual dysfunction and the auto-censor is rejecting your comments because you are using words that were used in the original article because that is the perfectly acceptable, technically correct language for the subject. Most of us are familiar with work-arounds we can use to defeat the auto-censor to hold a normal conversation. By far the most frustrating censorship CNN engages in is the to which you are referring, the censorship of ideas. It can only be explained by human (moderator) intervention and has no rhyme or reason except purposeful suppression of ideas and opinions with which the moderator or, possibly, CNN advertisers or owners disagree. The former (auto-censor) naughty word censorship is a bit ridiculous but is somewhat understandable, but the latter form of censorship of ideas is abhorrent and questionable in a supposed free speech society.

Time for a national law defining what what qualified means and grouping colleges into certain tiers. From now on, you can only apply to schools you are qualified to apply to. Everyone may go to community college.

I've noticed quite a few people on this board....SueEllen, Dduke, Urfkntool....have seemed to make this argument of "Equality for All" into an argument that white people are somehow superior.

Now, I think it's time to open some eyes. The truth of the matter is that "Equality for All" means exactly what it says. You shouldn't get a better job just because your white/black/yellow/purple/whatever. You should get a better job because your better at it. A woman should not get a job over a man as a secretary just because she is a woman. If the man is better qualified, has more refined skills, he should get that job. Likewise...a white college student should not get a scholarship over a black student, if the black student has better grades, better attendance, and better credentials.

The left created Affirmative Action to "even the field" when it came to jobs, housing, and chances to get into colleges. What they didn't realize was all they had to do was send the "minorities" back to the countries they came from for them to be the absolute best off. Instead, they created a r-a-c-i-s-t policy that works against the indigineous white population. They claimed it was to be anti-racist, but really they're just anti-white.

The entire population that has all European genetics. Do a search on Kennewick Man, and another search on "European skull North America" and you'll see Europeans were actually here LONG before the "native americans."

Exactly what is the “indigenous white” population of the United States? I wasn’t aware that there was any such thing.

The entire population that has all European genetics. Do a search on Kennewick Man, and another search on "European skull North America" and you'll see Europeans were actually here LONG before the "native americans."

Urafkntool, the ethnic origin of the Kennewick Man is still in dispute, however it is indisputable that the Whites who live in the United States today are not his progeny...they came from Europe. I have seen no argument that the Europeans stemmed from ancestors of the United Kennewick Man. On the other hand, most believe that the origins of all humans stem from Africa.

Take a look at the violent crime statistics now and in.. say, 1952. The rapes, the robberies, the assaults, the muggings, murders.. go take a look and you'll figure it out quickly if you're intelligent. Otherwise you're just anti-white and a fan of white genocide.

There aren't hardly any violent crimes committed by whites. Some, but not many. No, they're committed by your beloved "minorities," namely the black and mexican variety. Asians tend to leave people alone and live in their own little space with their own businesses. Blacks and mexicans, on the other hand, feel a need to move into and completely destroy every white neighborhood in existence. The government calls the lack of white neighborhoods and DIEversity to be anti racist. What they mean it is, is anti-white.

Anti-racism is a codeword for anti-white. STOP supporting white genocide, STOP siding with minorities who are becoming a MAJORITY IN EVERY WHITE COUNTRY, and learn to be white again!

There aren't hardly any violent crimes committed by whites. Some, but not many. No, they're committed by your beloved "minorities," namely the black and mexican variety. Asians tend to leave people alone and live in their own little space with their own businesses. Blacks and mexicans, on the other hand, feel a need to move into and completely destroy every white neighborhood in existence. The government calls the lack of white neighborhoods and DIEversity to be anti racist. What they mean it is, is anti-white. Anti-racism is a codeword for anti-white. STOP supporting white genocide, STOP siding with minorities who are becoming a MAJORITY IN EVERY WHITE COUNTRY, and learn to be white again!

I don't need to "learn" to be white, Ura, it is an attribute I happened to be born with. I neither find it to be a symbol of pride or shame. I do believe, however, that my life has been a great deal easier because of it...which I believe is unjust. Fortunately, I was not brought up as a racist, and have no desire to "learn" the inaccurate, and obnoxious views you hold about Asians, Blacks, or Hispanics. My daughter asked me why I am wasting my time on here communicating with people such as yourself, and I have concluded that she is correct. Alpha has been a far more articulate and persuasive communicator on the issue of AA than I could hope to be, and I will defer to him to continue the communication on my behalf and on behalf of the rest of us who agree with him.

In other words, what you're saying is that you're going to continue to be anti-white and pro white genocide. You're a horrible parent to raise your child that way. I was raised by hippies, to be "open minded" and liberal, and I saw the actual results of that... the white race is now down to 8% of the global population. 8%. Asians are, I think, still highest because of China, but blacks are 2nd, mestizo's are third. We're last. We're being wiped out by a joint effort of murder and crossbreeding outside of the human species. But I'm sure you'll cheer as they slaughter you.

Kennewick man, moron. Clearly a European skull structure. Of course you'd have to actually have the brains to review skull structures to know what I'm talking about. I'm also well aware that white people came from Europe, but we came here FIRST.

You do know that it was discovered after more studies that he is most likely not of european descent and most likly Ainu or Polynesians, right? If you are going to use anthropological research, make sure that you follow up. A small clip on telivison or Wikipedia a few years ago does not make you an expert.

You are correct, Grant, and even if you were not (some anthropologists still argue that he was Caucasian), there is no evidence that I am aware of that any of the Caucasians currently living in the United States are his progeny, or that he ever migrated to Europe. But I made that argument yesterday, and it fell on deaf ears.

By your statement then, a more accurate view of "equal" would require the scales to be adjusted so that they can be balanced. Justice is a tricky thing, my friend. Even the criminal and deviant suffer a consquence for their behavior, and we call that justice.

Some of what Gratz says is correct, but she doesn't address the issue in affirmative action. What is to be done about a situation whereby a group of people are discriminated against for many generations because of the easily discriminated feature that their skin contains more melanin than that of white people? What if the discrimination occurs in lessened funding for education, discouragement of advancement through promotion because the white supervisor is more comfortable with someone more like him or her, lower pay and thus lesser opportunity for saving or investment in education, etc? What should be done about this? Can the discriminated class relieably escape the destiny of discrimination in some other way?

And what if the rating scale itself is discriminatory? Adding 10 or 20 points to the score may be an attempt to fix this. Is the rating scale used at the University robust enough to work across all classes of preparatory schools, individual capability and opportunity? The real measure of success for the rating system and it's internal correction through afirmative action is whether the graduates come out with the requisite skills. If they do, then the affirmative action worked.

Except that your ten or twenty points, by putting the disadvantaged student into a college that is over his ability, increases his chances of falure, dropping out, and never achieving his professional goals. You are doing him more injury on the pretext of helping him.

And - he's (overwhelmingly) the child of already middle class parents. If not upper middle class. The benefits of Affirmative Action are overwhelmingly concentrated on the already well off blacks.

That's actually been shown not to be true. Look up the Posse Foundation project that liberal arts colleges around the country are using. The gist of it is that the students not only need to be given a chance regarding admissions but also need a stronger support network to counter the inevitable "they don't belong" pressures. The Posse Foundation shows that it's not a given that Affirmative Action students who fail weren't capable from the start; instead, it's the fact that they're dealing with external pressures even after being admitted that causes failure. Posse Foundation students today perform as well as or better than students who came in via regular channels.

So you believe that a group is responsible for the actions of it's individual parts? Do you have any idea where that could go if expanded upon in different topics? You apparently will seek any excuse, other then personal responsibility, to explain failures..

It's not seeking an excuse for failures, Kelly. My students could tell you all about my stance on personal responsibility, and sadly enough, too many of them will also be able to tell you about failure after viewing their midterm grades. The point is not that groups should be held responsible for individual members or individual members for groups. Instead, the point is that groups, like individuals, also bear responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Here, society as a whole perpetuates an injustice on its have-nots (who, for historical reasons, happen to be mostly minorities), and society as a whole needs to address that.

The students who are failing my classes do, quite frankly, deserve to fail, because they're not meeting the standard. That doesn't mean, however, that they don't deserve the chance to succeed. No matter what I do, there are some who are going to fail, and I'm resigned to that. At the same time, I also realize that there are some who can pass or even thrive if given the help they need, and that's what I want my society to also realize.

Alpha, I can agree with everything you just said. Still doesn't change the fact that AF is government sanctioned discrimination. Punishing mainly poor Whites in the present for the actions of some rich Whites centuries ago. In no other context would that make sense, but in todays politically correct world it does.

But what if the problem is less one of advantaging the disadvantaged student, but, rather, one of remeasuring the dismeasured student. You talk of the disadvantaged student being put into a place where he or she doesn't belong because of lack of capability. I have the feeling that you are not speaking from experience, but are repeating things you have heard from others. I suggest you put yourself into a position of actually getting to know the affirmative action students and then drawing conclusions based on your own experiences with them. My experiences with minority students in Universities is that they were usually just as capable as the majority students. I have run into very few minority students who were out of their league.

As long as certain people receive favoratism as a result of their family history, economic and political endowments, and their social status there will continue to be racism until the shift of the balance of power is achieved.

It's absolutely unfair to everyone in society because we accept dumber blacks, hispanics and whites in favor of diversity. The person who is most qualified should get the positions in college, Race should have nothing to do with it.

That's an interesting question which gets to the heart of what Affirmative Action is trying to do. If we just look at inferential statistics, we know what the distribution of qualified applicants should look like, but that distribution isn't matching the distribution of those actually hired/accepted. If two people were equally qualified, those from certain groups (race, ethnicity, gender, religion) were getting hired/accepted at much higher rates than simple chance would dictate. The whole goal of Affirmative Action, leaving aside questions of how well it currently meets its goal, is to remove the systemic biases that make a well-qualified majority member more likely to get hired/accepted than an equally-qualified minority member.

You are trying to sugarcoat discrimination in fancy language. You keep mentioning that all AF action does is increase the pool of qualified applicants, but you don't say how it does that. It does it by lowering the score required to get into the "pool." If a score of 95 is required for the position, but not enough of the desired race scored 95 then just lower the score therby increasing the pool. In the real world it's called "dumbing down." Keep lowering it until you get the numder you want and then award them the position and say they came from the "pool" of qulaified applicants.. You lie by ommission and think the rest of us are too uneducated to know that we've been duped..

It's not dumbing down in the least. I sure don't want a colleague who's going to bring my department's reputation down. We just have a better idea of the biases inherent in the measures we're using and try to correct for those. As I've stated ad nauseum, two equally-qualified groups will end up with different performances if one is under pressures that the other doesn't have to deal with. We're not looking for unqualified people; we're looking for qualified people that we'd otherwise have missed had we ignored the biases in our measures.

You may use different words to describe it, but it is "dumbing down" to us uneducated types. And who in this world is not under pressure? I happen to be White, every time I leave my house I'm under pressure that no person of color could possibly know or feel. Was I awarded my degree because I am White? Did I get that job because I am White? Am I first in line at the movies because I am White? I am expected to score high on the SAt because I am White and the test is of course biased towards me? You would have to be White to understand.. I am speaking tongue in cheek, but you get my point. I cannot know what it's like to be Black, but a Black person cannoit know what it's like to be White.

The pressures we're talking about here are a bit different, because I don't know of any colleagues who've asked whether they got their job only because they were white. We all have pressure to perform, but it's one thing when the pressure concerns something we're supposedly good at doing and another altogether when the pressure concerns something we're presumably poor at doing.

If Barbara Streisand sings off-key, we make a situational attribution, e.g. "She must be sick". If someone without her reputation sings off-key, though, we make a dispositional attribution, e.g. "She really can't sing!". The same behavior is judged differently based on our prior notions of whoever does the behaving. Conceptually, minorities are in the not-Streisand boat, so that their failures are disproportionately seen as confirmation of their inferiority. Minorities don't get the benefit of the doubt, and that increases the pressures that I referred to.

The short answer, sadly enough, is that we don't know if eliminating the bias is even possible. There've been a lot of attempts to make, for instance, culturally-unbiased IQ tests, but those work by excluding verbal information, and that doesn't make sense given that we think and remember information using language. It's really the verbal side that introduces the most biasing effect, BTW, probably because it's a lot easier to catch up in math than to suddenly explode one's vocabulary.

Alpha.. I have not read all of your posts so I do not not whether or not you have stated your race, but I am going to make an assumption that you are White. One problem people have with academics, White academics in particular, is that they love to tell the rest of us what we should do but do not do it themselves. You want/defend AF because we need more educated minorities to remedy past discrimination. We need more minorities in positions of authority, such as college instructors. If you feel so passionate about that then why don't you give up your position to one of those in the "pool" of qualified minorities? You will not do so becasue you want to keep what you have, you want poor Whites who are trying to reach your level to be the ones to pay the price. White academics do this, White politicians do this, White entertainers do this.... When you and your fellow academics were discussing the issue of SAT scores and AF how many stood up and said "I am here because of White privilege, so I will give up my position to a non-white." I would be willing to place a bet that none have ever done it. Instead you decide that AF is good and proper, make poor Whites pay, I will keep what I have.. Your profession is seen as very hypocritical.

Since you're asking, I'm black and from the South Bronx. There's no need for me to give my position up to a minority insomuch as I'm a minority myself. When I applied for jobs out of grad school, I chose, much to my advisor's dismay, to leave my race and socioeconomic background completely off of my applications because I refused to be considered an Affirmative Action candidate. It was only after I was already on the inside, so to speak, that I learned what Affirmative Action was really about and began to change my views on it.

I want poor whites to move up in the world along with everyone else. As I said before, I believe that poor whites aren't given enough attention, especially poor whites in rural areas. The same mechanisms that make me a rarity in academia also make poor whites a rarity in my profession and others, and Affirmative Action should do more to help them, too.

Ultimately, I believe that society would be better off once it takes care of its have-nots, no matter what their race is. We don't need anyone to give up what they have now. Instead, we need those who have make the path to prosperity easier for those who don't, and we'll all benefit once everyone has at least a decent standard of living.

I agree with what you have just posted, but you did not answer my question. How many have stood up and said: "I will give up my position because I unfairly benefitted from White priviiege?" Because I agree with your last post doesn't change the fact that your profession is seen as hypocritical.

Hi i know its unfortunate that sometimes people that are less qualified than others get the job/school. what most of you need to realize is that like it or not we are mostly a product of our upbringing, you will be mostly like your parents, they are mostly like your grandparents. So since most of you were brought up from normal hard working families with great education then of course you will be more qualified than an african american person who only a few generations ago were sharecroppers at best. But im guessing that these slightly less qualified person getting into law school is still going to work their butt off, and since we are a product of our upbringing, then now these people have a chance to give their kids a better path than would have been possible. Miss gratz, im sure since your so talented then you and people like you will be able to find another job. I know its not exactly fair, but we are a country where white people came in, stole all the land from the natives, got rich off the sweat and blood of imported slaves. Now that we had the civil rights movement boom we expect everything to be fair?

I don't care about anyone's family history when it comes to having the most qualified professionals. There are plenty of poor white kids that have all of the same disadvantages you are speaking about, why are they not given credit for their family's past?

And if you did make a "white nation" business owners would quickly find that latte sipping, math avoiding, middle-management or rural farmer white people could not turn a profit and would outsource then move to Asia or India. You can't have a nation of all middle managers and farmers - you need engineers and technical people. Let me give you a hint - a white engineer would cost 80-100k at least while an asian one of the same ability or even better would work for half of that.

Why don't you take my advice and try to open a business hiring only white people. See what happens.

@Fiscal2020: Actually, you're wrong. Whites actually built pretty much every modern civilization. If it wasn't for "ability for business to make profits," we would not have had an industrial revolution that swept over Europe and America. Frankly, if it wasn't for whites, this world would still be in the iron ages.

Kevininvancouver, congrats for having the guts to say what you feel. Too many that think like you dont have your courage and mask their racist philosophy with phony pleas for freedom by which they mean free to keep anyone who does not share their skin color and born again faith in their proper place.

This would be HILARIOUS if they got rid of affirmative action...and the only people who could get into college were Asian.

If you could only look at grades, and SAT scores...and the Asian Americans and kids from other Asian nations just DOMINATED the admissions process at all of the tier one schools. The NCAA Tourney would be full of Jeremy Lin's. All of the bowl games DOMINATED by Asians because only grades and SAT's would get you in.

I think it would actually be kind of interesting. Just to see how good of athletes they are since they seem to not be given much of a chance otherwise.

But yeah...HILARIOUS...the unintended consequences of this. It would be like having your wish granted by an Evil Genie.

Yea white People are doing a great job ruining, oops i mean running everything aren't they? but I don't blame the color, but i dont think it helps either. Power and wealth is mostly passed down the generations anyway, so of course there is more white people in charge, you doof

Whites can hold their own in the free market against any race because capitalism is about good looks and selling. The ultimate individual in capitalism is not the farmer or the factory worker but the salesman. And whites look good, so they dominate. Ivy League schools put you hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and it will be a generation or two before any other race has the money like whites. Remember civil rights was only 50 years ago, barely enough for any other race to amass a fortune.

I'm sick of whites saying they have zero advantages. Whether government action or affirmative action is necessary is a completely separate issue from whether whites have an advantage, and they clearly do. I would respect a white who came out and said, yes I have many advantages, I had it easier, but quota based affirmative action is wrong. By the way, there's another kind of affirmative action, the kind that doesn't involve quotas that conservatives like Bush supported.

Fiscal, Bush not only supported that other type of affirmative action, he represented it. Could he have completed his education without it? I think not if he were Black, female, Asian, or, for that matter, a poor White. I don't think Kevin is going to get it...

You cant fight discrimination with discrimination, A realistic question? A white guy walks down a mean street in harlem 4am -a black guy walks down a country road rural white area-
Whos safer?
Everybody knows this answer,
someone said earlier, thanks to race pimps like sharpten/jackson and now obama- blacks think they have mastered the art of using the racecard to compensate the poor family values that have turned out after 5o years of welfare/ affirmative action-
Personal responsibility has become a swear word in america today-

So, if my manager hires only white people, and I need an asian or black to sell my product to those communities, I let him keep costing me money? Or do I force him to hire a black man with "discrimination"?

You absolutely can fight fire with fire. All these "whites only" posters have never run a business.

The world is overpopulated... this wouldn't be an issue if we didn't have so many HUMAN BEINGS on this planet.... regardless of race issue.... this just adds to the frustration of too many people to compete for anything now these days

No special treatment for anyone. No vacation. No holidays. No pension. No insurance. No sick leave. No maternity leave. No unemployment. No medicare. No medicaid. No social security. You don't work, you don't get paid. Let's see who wants equal treatment. We have a lot of special interest groups that think they are special.

I believe in a color blind society. Nobody should be given special treatment because of their race. Period. I don't know why this is even a debate. This is what America is supposed to be about, equal opportunities for everyone.

Racial preferences are so deeply ingrained in most people that even the ones who intellectually abhor discrimination, will subconsciously put white ahead of black. The evidence of this is overwhelming as in criminal cases (look up the statistics on % of murder cases punished by death penalty between black perpetrators & white victims and vice versa). Affirmative action merely tries to counterbalance this. As a result, companies who employ affirmative action often end up with a fairly representative workforce and are generally more successful than those who don't.

Does this mean that sometimes the balance will trip to the other side and specific non-minority people will be "discriminated" against? Perhaps. But if employed wisely, affirmative action will just about cancel out the pervasive injustice the other way; nothing more. And that's how it should be.

So, you're saying bigotry is unavoidable. And, as a solution to that problem, you propose that we should all be bigots and, in your estimation, all of that intolerance and hatred will cancel out.

I think we can do MUCH better than that. I think we're capable of recognizing our own faults, and correcting our behavior on a personal level. But, we each have to recognize where bigotry is – inside each of us – and know that it's our responsibility (EVERYONE'S responsiblity) to combat that impulse.

You can't win the battle against bigotry and prejudice if you are simultaneously employing and embracing those faults.

"As a result, companies who employ affirmative action often end up with a fairly representative workforce and are generally more successful than those who don't." This is an opinion offered without facts to back it up – nice try though!

Let's see you try and hire a hundred white people who demand 60k a year, want full benefits, want to work 4 days a week, want a secretary and so on and try to turn a profit. Meanwhile, if you're selling a product, you want salesmen of every ethnicity so you can sell to any race. This is a fact of business, and anyone who has opened a business will tell you that.

Go ahead and open a small business and hire only white people. See how fast you go bankrupt when they work only 9-5 and demand every benefit possible. As a bonus see if you can sell your products to asians, latinos or blacks if you hire only white people.

Minorities are working. They're just not getting anywhere because of the biases against them and the structural inequalities that require them to work harder to get to where whites of equivalent ability get.

Yep my (ex)daughter married a black man and neither he or anyone in his family works! I offered to take my daughter back if she left the deadbeat but she's not willing to accept our help. She's just showing her kids that it's ok to be a lazy minority like their dad.

I was referring to graduate schools; I have no role in undergrad admissions. As a major research university, Michigan likely puts way more time and effort into its graduate student applicant pool than into its undergraduate applicant pool. BTW, what opinion do people have of the schools with reputations for graduating incompetent students?

Is it your understanding that being accepted to medical school makes one a doctor? Graduating medical school does not even make one a doctor. They still have to do residency. Anyone might earn a degree (heck, the Una-Bomber went to the University of Michigan and Harvard), but its the earning that counts in the long run. Since you provide no standard for what should define "merit", a better guide would be to ask where the doctor received her medical training (if you insist on using this line of reasoning).

Nothing perpetuates racism more than the affirmative action. This, and modern professional "civil rights" activists, who are interested in keeping racism alive and well because "fighting" it keeps them gainfully employed.

Obama's an outlier at this point, isn't he? If we claim that there's, perhaps, a 1/1,000,000 chance of something happening, in what way does it occurring a single time argue against the probability we just claimed?

The nature/nurture argument has been with us since time immemorial, and it promises to continue to be so. What we know at this point is that IQ, for instance, has a genetic loading of about 40 to 60%. The nature side affects the potential, but how much of that potential is realized still depends largely on conditions in the environment.

I don't know that anyone is anti-nature. However, I do know that the nature side of the argument is emphasized far more in American culture than in East Asian cultures, with the upshot being that Americans are more likely to err on the side of personal traits when explaining behavior while East Asians are more likely to err on the side of conditions being responsible for behavior.

Get over yourselves. I'm half white but have a non-white sounding lasting name. I couldn't get a job using my real last name though my qualifications and education made me a perfect candidate (fyi- I turned down a scholarship and paid my own tuition because white people automatically thought I received it because I'm a minority. I did things the hard way just so white people couldn't discount my achievements.).

When I married my husband (anglo last name), I didn't take his name and decided to do an experiment of my own. I started applying for jobs in the DC Metro area by submitting two identical CVs to the same companies, one with my maiden name, the other with my married name (content, formatting and font were the same). Big surprise, the same companies that sent polite rejection letters using my real last name also called offering interviews based on what I submitted using my husband's, white sounding last name. My interviews went well and I received job offers even after disclosing, up front, that I had intentionally not used my real name on my resume.

So, I don't experience discrimination nearly as often when people think I'm a white woman. I grew up watching my ethnic father being treated worse than my white mother even though he is a good educated man and she is, essentially just white and ignorant (sorry, it's true, she couldn't even help me with my homework). I don't feel sorry for white people who are discriminated against because I fully believe the universe balances everything, eventually.

The world is never fair at any given time and there is no such thing as equality. Equality is an unachievable ideal that we, as humans, inherently reject. Every one should get ahead however they can by playing the game to the best of their abilities, as honestly as possible. White people got where they are using unfair advantages all over the world. Minorities will eventually take it all back by using the same methods.

In Alabama they have an AFFIRMATIVE DISCRIMINATION program called the BEAR program. There were 10 BEAR (all black) students in my med school class. The non-BEAR students average GPA was 3.5 with an average MCAT of 28. The BEAR students average GPA was 2.7 with an average MCAT of 17!!!!!! Not surprisingly only 1 of the 10 BEAR students graduated on time and only 4 of the 10 finished med school. I had several white male friends with much higher GPA's/MCAT scores that did not get accepted. The PC Nazis can try to spin it all day long but that will not change the fact that AFFIRMATIVE DISCRIMINATION IS SIMPLY WRONG!

So you've counted five black MDs who wouldn't have been MDs had they just relied on the system to judge them correctly. As for the ones who didn't make it through, I remember plenty of people from my cohort in grad school who didn't finish because of all sorts of factors unrelated to their abilities. What you did was attribute their not finishing the program to the fact that they all came in via this program, and that's not justified. The reason there are programs of this sort is because whites who don't make it are seen as a waste of potential while blacks who don't make it are seen as having never had the potential in the first place. Look up Claude Steele's work on stereotype threat and then return to the conversation a more educated participant.

How arrogant. Telling others to look up some obscure research that has not even been widely accepted in it's own field. It has been described as a marginal phenomenon whose importance has been vastly inflated for political reasons. You need to educate yourself a bit more before criticizing others.

So you've counted five black MDs who wouldn't have been MDs had they just relied on the system to judge them correctly.

NO! I said 1 of 10 graduated on time (in 4 years) and only 4 of 10 finished to become MD's (not 5).

"As for the ones who didn't make it through, I remember plenty of people from my cohort in grad school who didn't finish because of all sorts of factors unrelated to their abilities. What you did was attribute their not finishing the program to the fact that they all came in via this program, and that's not justified. "

WRONG again....The 6 that did NOT become MD's did NOT become MD's because they FAILED their classes i.e. they did not have the abilities to PASS THE TESTS ya big dummy!

"whites who don't make it are seen as a waste of potential while blacks who don't make it are seen as having never had the potential in the first place. "

WRONG yet again! The white males I knew who had higher GPA's and higher MCAT scores were NEVER accepted into MED school so yes there 'potential' was wasted bc they weren't even given a chance to try to pass med school & yes the blacks who FAILED who were given the chance to pass med school were FAILURES i.e. for whatever reason they did not 'have the potential' (but the 4 blacks that did pass med school to become MD's in my class did have the 'potential' and they lived up to that potential so that is great for them!)

and 'stereotype threat' MAY be a real phenomenon but I believe it is far more likely to be a PC Utopian EXCUSE for failure! It is based on the Utopian idea that 'all people are equal' when the simple fact is ALL PEOPLE ARE UNIQUE! Science has clearly shown numerous differences between races....for ex. Asian males on average do, in fact, have smaller penises but at the same time on average they have higher IQ's. Basically, reality is NOT PC!

Ben, I'm a PhD with an IQ of 140. Call me a lot of things if you so choose, but "dummy" doesn't make any sense. My point is that there is clear evidence that when you take people of equal abilities (as determined by the tests you're referencing) and introduce stereotype threat, the stereotyped group performs worse. When someone messes up, we can attribute that to their lack of ability, but lack of ability is not the only possible reason for their performance.

Stereotype threat works in all fields, accounting, for example, for why we have such an under-representation of whites in the NBA. It's a real phenomenon, and it needs to be addressed. BTW, if you're unfamiliar with the research, Steele has also shown that the stereotyped group and control group perform equally well on the same task once the threat of being reduced to the stereotype (e.g. being taken as a sign that all white men are terrible athletes) is removed.

Is it mind numbing to work in a clinical setting, performing the same set of focused task over and over again, knowing full well you didnt need to study so hard because everything you do can be referenced quickly and easily?

Alpha, you prove my point again. "I'm a PhD. Consider me educated." How arrogant.. And Mr. Steele's research is marginalized. And what the heck does this have to do with anything I said: "This, BTW, is why Obama wants everyone to get a higher education." You claim to be so educated, but post so much gibberish ( I love that word)

I don't need to claim to be educated, Kelly. My degree and accomplishments exist irrespective of who likes them. The point about education was that we've got people here throwing out opinions on matters that already have answers, and if answers are available, we needn't ignore them in favor of speculation.

Again, Steele's work isn't marginalized. There are definitely people in sociology and social psychology who question its impact across domains, but no one who understands the research questions its validity. I'm not dealing with the question of people who are underqualified or somesuch. What I pointed out, clearly and concisely, is that groups of people who have already been determined to be equally qualified turn in dramatically different performances when one group is worried about confirming a stereotype.

The best way to test causal assumptions is to see whether removing the presumptive cause makes the effect disappear. Steele has shown time and again that it does, e.g. women who take a math test perform better on that test when they believe that the women-and-math stereotypes don't apply in that case. Our performances are due, in part, to our own traits, but because man is a social animal, they're also heavily influenced by the real or imagined presence of others.

Yes, you are arrogant. That is truth whether you acknowledge it or not, as evidenced by this statement: " but no one who understands the research questions its validity" What you are attempting to say is that if I question you then it is just because I do not fully understand.. I do understand, and I disagree. Evidently you have a problem with that.

It's not in terms of questioning me. We've already established that truth exists irrespective of who believes it. Instead, it's a matter of questioning an empirical fact. I know the arguments in the field, because I deal with them and engage in them on a daily basis. We have some theories that we all agree on and some that are off in the wilderness, and Steele's is closer to the former than to the latter.

Although this case was about admissions, similar quotas exist when it comes to grading and graduation as well. The result is bizarre: minority students who put forth an honest effort and actually deserve a 4.0 average enter the workplace and find that their abilities are discounted by a full letter grade, because HR departments are well aware of this practice and "correct" for it. The end result is that the best and brightest minority students wind up working to overcome a non-existent perceived deficit in their abilities, thanks to such misguided twaddle.

The HR departments have been "correcting" for that for generations, long before there was ever anything to apparently correct for. BTW, I'm a college professor and can tell you definitively that your assertion is a lie.

Well, it isn't a lie at the college I teach at, or at the university I attended where I know several professors. So apparently your experience isn't all-inclusive enough to make such absolute statements.

As for various prejudices and their history: sure, they've been around for a long time. Racial quotas, however, provide them with a foundational justification like nothing in the past, and the victims of that now justifiable prejudice are often those who have striven the hardest.

It seems pretty childish to me. Lots of people don't get into their first choice for school, and she has no evidence that she would have gotten in if it weren't for affirmative action. I'd be more impressed if she could get past this disappointment instead spending her entire life talking about it

Drew: really???? Here is an idea.... google bias against asian in college admission. you will find out that some blacks can get into Harvard with SAT score that Asian can only get into a state univeristy.

Echo: Perhaps you should examine more closely those who do admissions at Harvard. They could, in theory, let all Asian people in "first" one or two years, just to see what would happen. That will probably never happen, as the climate of schools is also such that mate selection need to favor those in the majority. No, it's not one of those official / provable things, but socialization is something colleges shape (intentionally or otherwise). I hate the premise, but it is common knowledge that the predominantly "white" schools do not like having a dominant Asian social culture. Its a subtext, but I'm sure you understand what I am saying. Note the UCLA girl's Asian rant from last year or so. The Asian socialization / assimilation problem on college campuses has existed for a long time. I genuinely understand what you are saying, but until the Asian MLK stands up and asks for a national, legal definition of qualified, Asians will continue to get the short end of the stick, even if AA vanishes. It is not right, but I'd be willing to be that I am right.

Is Ms. Gratz still complaining about a meager 20 points? White students get spotted over 20 points each year from the the first grade and Ms Gratz still comes up short. How did she lose over 240 points? She comes up short not in a contest between the best and the second best. She comes up short in a contest between the last acceptable student and the top unacceptable student. It is a coin toss. But if Ms Gratz can lose 240 points over twelve years, perhaps she was not even the top unacceptable student. I do not understand why Ms. Gratz was so weak of character as to let her dreams be crushed by one rejection. It is apparent that the University of Michigan saw through her weak character and made the right decision to reject.

Back in my days at Cal Berkeley, affirmative action still applied to get in as freshmen but once one applied to upper division business school, only performance counted which is why none of the affirmative action types were anywhere in sight in any of my business school classes.

Growing up Black in the Jim Crow South, Born and raised in miss during the turbulent time of the late 1950s, and early 60s, I experiences the segregation and racism that is prevalent in the deep south. I speaks out about injustice in America and in my state of iL , the committee and I fights cases about discrimination,it is so disappointed when whites tell a black person go back to Africa. All children's need a good education the affirmative action polieies may that possible. Please read Diana remarkable and uplifting story, As Diana will tell you, "No human being is better than another and no man is an island. http://Www.weavingdreamspublishing.com/nonfiction/growingupblackjimcrow.html

I can only imagine the quality of these sweethearts you snag. If they have a nose ring, do you do them with the ring in? How many tats do they have? Classy women always have lots of tats, right? Obviously these females are not the sharpest knives in the drawer since intelligent life would never spend 5 seconds with a low life, insect like bro such as yourself.

J$ – as the ol saying goes, when you're in a hole, stop digging. By the way, the only black women I ever did were brought in for various bachelor parties I either attended or organized. As so as it went off, my first thought was, "where are my pants" and not, "what is your number".

I would like to see equality in the divorce process. Women initiate the majority of divorces, are more likely to get custody of children, and are less likely to pay child support in the event they don't get custody.
If women want equal pay in the workplace, they should be doing equally hazardous work, and quit with the ridiculous fake nails that make them less capable workers. And deal with your own damn spiders!

Thsi twice as hard stuff is such junk. Most men that are in these places work the hardest. Most people don't realize it. It takes years, decades and sometimes generations for someone in a family to make it.

She claims that pointing out women are also afforded affirmative action is an empty talking point and then offers nothing to support that claim. Walk the talk and go all equal. Write an article and go all over the place fighting tooth and nail for equal rules for everyone regardless of gender. All I see you doing is fighting race based issues. You want it "equal" as long as you come out on top. Being white affords you advantages by nature which then spill over to society. Being a woman affords you advantages by nature which also spill over to society. Which one do you want to keep?

so...is it really ok for ANYone to be discriminated against...is discrimination against whites and/or women justified by the fact that blacks WERE discriminated against in the past? NO. Its unfair to all.

I hear you Mitch, all we Blacks have to do is just take a picture of the backside of hand and we get the jerb. I have no idea why the unemployment rate for Blacks is consistently twice the rate of Whites, because we all know that unqualified Blacks will nudge out (clearly) more qualified Whites nine times out of ten.

Any time you start to describe some one using black, African or Hispanic American , I feel you have already split us as a country, if we are all going to be equal stop the labeling, I have many american friends born in this country whose parents came from many different countries and continents, and if they are all to succeed in life then they need to have the same quality of education to start with and the same chances in life based on the merits of their achievements not the shade of their skin or their last name. I am just sick of all the rhetoric and discourse in this country, we are becoming a nation of whining children with poor math skills, terrible work ethic .

Equal apllication of law, eh? How about equal application of punishment for drug offenses also then? African Americans have the same rate of drug use as white Americans, and yet are convicted at 20 times the rate for the same offense and same number of offenses, same level of criminal background, and are given on average 1-5 years in prison, whereas the average white offender gets 'community service' as their 'punishment.'
Face it, white college applicants are NOT rejected overwhelmingly because 'their' place was taken by somebody from a minority background. Those border line cases are a very tiny percent of applicants. And those of us who whine that somebody else took our spot because of race... Weren't we also then borderline cases in the admissions too who could have done better in high school but didn't?

keep boiling in hour hatred. it turned out that they are more intelligent and fitted than what you call white race, and trying to turn this thing around saying that they are giving a boost. In reality there is no support whatsoever for minorities, and who can get ahead, get ahead, that's all. By the way, I'm white and I am for complete equality, so stop looking at other races as inferior because they are not a bit.

I have two sons – on white, one mixed race. I'm having a very hard time explaining to Caleb (my white son) why Christopher (my mixed race son) gets an advantage in school admissions. They both had the same upbringing, the same amount of love and same opportunities. Why does one get an advantage the other doesn't? More so, even my mixed race Mexican/Caucasian wife represents a quandry. I've asked her whether her Caucasian half owes reparations to her Mexican half. She doesn't like the question but admits my point. There's no rationalizing the irrational.

I think white and asians should br given an advantage during NBA tryouts to help promot diversity.... if that happened to you think the teams would be as good? Of course not because you gave preference to someone that might be less qualified. Why this is acceptable for doctors, lawyers and other professionals is beyond me.

The Jeremy Lin case argues against you. Despite outstanding high school basketball credentials, he could not get a look from any major or mid-tier college basketball programs. Despite outstanding performance at Harvard, he was blown off by the pros. I mean, his stats and team achievements were HUGE and he turned entire programs around. This only makes sense in the context that he wasn't taken seriously as a basketball player because he is Asian.

Affirmative Action wouldn't give them preference during tryouts. It would work on the pool side, making a bigger effort to get a pool of applicants that is more representative of the population from which that pool is drawn. Jeremy Lin was clearly qualified to play but got discriminated against because of his Asian heritage. The question that we can't answer is, "how many like him could've made it had we not been biased against them from the start?" I study judgment and decision making, and I'm probably the only one on this board who does that for a living. There is no question whatsoever that our decisions are based on cognitive biases, no matter how much we'd like to believe that we're rational.

What Gratz forgot on purpose to mention is that she was borderline with other students of different races, and for the sake of variety in the school environment, the administration of it chose someone of a different race and color. I don't see anything wrong with that. Actually it would had been questionable for the college to choose her while they already had 60% of their students white....hello, what's her problem? She was not rejected because of her skin color despite the fact she had a better score than others, she was rejected because she was borderline with the others, with the administration having the freedom to go with whoever they would like too, at their discretion.

If she was even 1 point ahead of someone of another race, she should have been admitted. If I'm under the knife, I don't care about past racial descrimination or any of the other garbage listed here, I care that I have the most qualified doctor possible regardless of race. Affirmative action casts doubt on the abilities of all those who benefit from the program.

That might be a valid argument if points were the end all say all in college admissions at the University of Michigan. However, U of M asks for essays. We'll never see Jennifer's essay though, will we. Nor will we discover if someone did more community service than her, or was involved with more clubs. Someone may have played more instruments than her, or starred in more school plays. I am not taking U of M's side here. I'm just trying to broaden the scope of the discussion to reveal how U of M operates. They call the admissions process "an art," rather than an exact science. Very smart people drop out of college because they find their calling. Graduating is just one phase in a life time of learning. College after high school should not be made to be the height, but the base. Is AA in college admissions a good idea? Not really, because it says it's better to plant a tree in the fall than in the spring. I made this argument to the female student BAMN leader while she was working in a computer lab at U of M's North University Building, and she did not have a real good answer for that. But remember, Madonna dropped out of U of M, so being white and talented is no guarentee of anything.

Besides going from medical field to math it shows how passionate and naturally inclined to their profession are
our physicians nowadays. If it's not guitar playing maybe tennis will do it, just like that. Keep going to the doctor.

across: "What Gratz forgot on purpose to mention is that she was borderline with other students of different races, and for the sake of variety in the school environment, the administration of it chose someone of a different race and color. I don't see anything wrong with that."

What you're completely ignoring is the massive boost minorities were given in the application process. She was not merely "equal" with a minority and dumped because of diversity (which may be acceptable), she was booted completely because unqualified minorities were put ahead of her merely because of her race.

There's a very big difference between using social, economic, geographical, etc. status to decide which candidate to choose when they're otherwise equal and giving one race a monumental boost (or any boost at all) over another race in admissions process.

You would clearly be against an admissions policy that favored only whites, as you admit. So how is that different from here? The only argument open to you is that it's discrimination but it's "good" discrimination. Which is hard to stomach.

Believe it or not I'm white 100%, and she was not rejected because she was smarter but unfortunately had white skin color, but because she was borderline with others of different race, and the school had the freedom the go with someone else for the sake of variety, because they already had over 60% of the students caucasians. I don't see anything wrong with that.

across: "and she was not rejected because she was smarter but unfortunately had white skin color, but because she was borderline with others of different race"

Obviously you don't know anything about the case.

Minorities were given a substantial boost in the admissions process. The case itself described how marginally qualified minority candidates were given such a helping hand that they would surpass other candidates. That has the effect of putting one race ahead of the other almost exclusively. It also means that so many minorities were being pushed ahead of other candidates that - because there are only a certain amount of seats available at the school - many qualified whites were becoming "marginally qualified" whites.

Even assuming race may be used as a tie breaker, race was emphatically not used race as a tiebreaker in her case.

across: "She was not rejected because of her skin color despite the fact she had a better score than others, she was rejected because she was borderline with the others, with the administration having the freedom to go with whoever they would like too, at their discretion."

This is dishonest and contradictory. You claim she wasn't rejected because of her skin color, she was merely rejected because of other applicants' skin color.

The administration has the right to choose whoever they want. They cannot, however, employ discriminatory policies aimed at irrelevant qualities: like skin color.

Again, there's a major difference between giving minorities a 20 point boost (on a 100 point scale), and using "race" as a deciding factor between equals for the sake of diversity. But even that's unsupportable because race is not a proxy for socioeconomic, etc. status. After all, even looking at the Supreme Court, is it more diverse with a Justice Thomas and Scalia? Or a Justice Brennan and Scalia?

a certain part of every college admissions process is subjective. i can see from here some reasons that the admissions office might ahave made another choice – starting with her interest in blaming other people for unforatunate events in her life. did she apply to another school? did she take other steps to fulfull her dreams? did she consider another medical specialty? all no. So maybe they saw in the black student some gumption, and maybe they saw in her someone who didn't have what it takes to succeed.

lucianne: "So maybe they saw in the black student some gumption, and maybe they saw in her someone who didn't have what it takes to succeed."

Did you read the article? Have you ever read the Bollingers cases?

It had nothing to do with her being "marginally qualified" or having no "gumption". It had to do with the discriminatory admissions policies of the schools that gave massive advantages to minorities. You don't seem to understand that for every minority that skips 10 places in line - when a school has limited seats to begin with - the more other candidates are bumped from the list entirely, or becoming "marginally qualified" on the school's admission scale.

Affirmative action creates a a logical justification for racism. If I am going to have open heart surgery, I know the white doctor made it into school based purely on his/her academic ability, where as a latino or black doctor MAY have had help and have been less qualified. If I were one of the races that benefits from affirmative action I would be outraged that my accomplishments would always have a cloud over them, that I may have in someway been given an advantage because of my race.

Really? You make an assumption, based purely on race, that a 'white' doctor is providing you care because of credentials that you have distinct knowledge? Could your 'white' doctor been admitted because s/he was an athlete? Or a legacy applicant because a family member matriculated, privileged family donor or otherwise? Or was this 'white' doctor recently terminated with cause at a previous residency and found a job in front of you because s/he matched your health care plan? I've got some beach front property in Arizona that you've got to see my friend.

At least I know he didn't get into school simly because he's white. Affirmative action is a cause of racism, not an answer to it. Supporters of affirmative action are racist bigots, even if they are not intelligent enough to realize it, or maybe it's that they rationalize it because they happen to benefit from it. Favoritsm based on race is racism against those who are not favored.

Did George W. Bush get into Yale because of his brains? Did George W. Bush get an MBA from Harvard because of his mastery of business and economics? If you think so, you are probably ignorant enough to graduate from Yale or Harvard too, so long as your grandfather made enough money "trading with the enemy" as stated by the federal government in 1942.

That is a racist statement, there are many very intelligent black people out there. Unfortnately because we provide them advantages, the truly intelligent ones that can compete and win on a level field never receieve the credit they deserve.

If I am equal, and get to cast the same number of votes (one), with any another man or woman in town – why do I have to go to work every day so I can be taxed to pay his rent, pay for his food, pay for his health care, pay for his cell phone, pay for everything else he or she "needs"? What about us is equal? Am I not his slave? $16 TRILLION has been spent on giveaway (income transfer) programs since the 1960's. Do you think any of society's burdens are going to pay that bailout back to the taxpayers? Am I not the burden's slave?

I think it's important to note that affirmative action is in place to offset historical discrimination against certain minorities, including women, Ms. Gratz; I'm sure you wouldn't have minded if extra points were awarded to females trying to get into medical school, would you?). The issue the nation faces is, we created a world of disadvantage for some groups, and we're trying to rectify it.

jeffrey: "I think it's important to note that affirmative action is in place to offset historical discrimination against certain minorities, including women, Ms. Gratz;"

Oh please. Affirmative action was necessary to remedy the immediate effects of segregation. Segregation ended over 40 years ago. Any lingering social or economic inequalities are not due in any direct sense to discrimination, to unequal employment opportunities, etc. Why? Because every person now has the opportunity to succeed as they choose. If the social pressures they face (living in poor areas) prevents them from going to school or doing well, that has nothing to do with state imposed discrimination.

"I'm sure you wouldn't have minded if extra points were awarded to females trying to get into medical school, would you?)."

Whether she would have minded being given a free boost is irrelevant. You're asking her to consider her own self interests in deciding whether or not some activity is right or wrong.

40 years doesn't do it. Not when we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of years of "lesser than". Everyday, those in the minority, whatever their "difference" experience significant barriers to success that those in the majority don't face. Yes, I am talking overall....not every person who's part of each group. Research indicates over and over that despite the fact that many in the majority believe every child and adult has exactly the same chance in life from birth, that simply is not the case. Even as a white male, every day I see women, people of color, people of other nationalities, people of other religions, etc. having to work "twice as hard" to get to the same point as those who have the advantage of being in the majority.

This is the same excuse that Hitler used to persecute the Jews. He maintained that the Jews had too much of the money and business in Germany. He claimed that it was necessary to "rectify this imbalance" by depriving the Jews of their rights and their property. Now, the US government is using the same logic to deprive whites of their basic right to equality.

It was time for equal to mean equal, over 400 years ago, but it didn't then, does not now nor ever will in America. We are certainly much better off as a nation than we were even 50 years ago, but the reality is we will never all be treated equal. Now it's the Hispanics turn to learn that lesson here in America.

I have proof that there is no equality in our public schools. My son was given a letter saying he could not go to some of his classes and he could only use the nurse's restroom. This is what happens when a white kid reports that he and his friends are being threatened and assaulted due to their race. The schools either are afraid to discipline the african american kids, want kids distracted from learning to keep the test scores low in order to keep the federal dollars coming in, or are just too lazy to actually provide a safe learning environment and earn their high salaries.

Really now? Because I'm liberal, and I think that this is abhorrant. Maybe next time, you should think before you open your mouth and make sweeping generalizations about an entire group of people, the same thing, by the way, you seem to be against in the affirmative action cases (generalizing the qualifications of an entire race). I'm going to make a statement that *isn't* a sweeping generalization: your an idiot and a hypocrite.

I am actually somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of using racial preference in school admissions (would prefer to level the playing field at the lower school level), but you're nuts if you think that opportunity suddenly became equal for all the moment the Emancipation Proclamation was made.

Fact: Africans in America are living in a society where Caucasians have determined they shall have access to all and deny it to the rest. Africans in America have, by action of Caucasians in America, been traditionally poor, uneducated, socially and financially ruined.

Wanna cry fair on admissions programs? I am an African in America. I am a graduate student in Computer Science. I agree that inequity is wrong. Especially when measures exist that are highly underutilized. Most Africans in America attend HBCUs - look it up. Admission to Caucasian CUs is low, period. Anyone should, by virtue of their merit have access to anything in Caucasian America. But fact: Caucasians in America do not want that.

Hence the dilemma. How to apply corrections to Caucasian inequality. I use real and raw terms in my comment because this is real and raw reality for all non-Caucasians in America. So let's stop pretending we can all live on the same boat. How about we all begin valuing the contribution a citizen can make without regard to their race.

That is a pipe dream though and the facts will always be the facts - Damn you Caucasians can be just down-right evil.

While I am white, my gf is african-american, and she tells me I simply don't see the discrimination out there.

She is right. I don't. I was born privileged in a lot of ways, but looking at it in her eyes I am learning to see. Do I agree with state sponsored discrimination? no. Not at all. But is there a better way? Yes, it a perfect world, sure, but not now.

khal: "She is right. I don't. I was born privileged in a lot of ways, but looking at it in her eyes I am learning to see. Do I agree with state sponsored discrimination? no. Not at all. But is there a better way? Yes, it a perfect world, sure, but not now."

Oh please. This is like a child seeing the boogeyman in every corner and under every bed.

Your own (mis)interpretation of the world, and conclusions that everything in it is discriminatory, is repulsively stupid. If something doesn't appear to be discriminatory to a reasonable person, good chances are it isn't discriminatory no matter how many partisan political activists yell and cry about it.

Black CJCOS (look it up)- check. Black Sec of State-Check, Black POTUS- CHECK!!! When will the people who are 'oppressed" and 'held down" realize they have bootstraps? Anyone in this nation can do anything they want! Hard work, determination and a spine go a long way. Quit crying foul when you didn't do your homework, you make bad choices which put you in bad situations. It isn't the 'man' holding you down it is your own anchors.

You seem to have concluded that minorities are all "looking for a free ride" and are constantly whining about discrimination in order to get one. I am sure that there are plenty of those people out there but then again, I know a whole lot of white men (and women) who are constantly whining about reverse discrimination and where's their free ride.
Frankly, i encounter a whole lot more minorities (i am a white male) who work hard to earn everything that they get and who absolutely don't want any handouts. Nevertheless – every day, in addition to working hard like everyone else, they have to constantly fight the belief that people like you perpetuate – that they only have gotten where they are because of "reverse discrimination". Try dealing with that for a while and then tell me if the world is as fair as you seem to think it is.

Ready for a novel idea? Prepare yourself – this one is earth shattering. How about if we make "equal opportunity" exactly that? What if we removed all color from job applications altogether? What if people had to achieve and be rewarded based on merit alone? What if employers had to justify exactly why they did or did not hire a person – based on merit and record? What if every person who was not hired and claimed it was because of their race had to prove in court that such a statement was true? What if we made racial discrimination a criminal offense, with jail time? What if we also made accusations of discrimination (i.e. – "the race card") that could not be proven a criminal offense, too – treated like character assasination – with monetary damages owed?
How about: discriminate based on color, get sued and pay. Oh – already exists. AND: play the race card but be prepared to prove it in court – or get sued and pay. Not as popular, huh?
If equal means equal, not choosing someone for a job based on race is illegal. Also choosing someone for a job based on a race would be illegal.
Unless you are able to scientifically prove exactly how many members of a minority race should be hired to make up for a specific racial injustice in the past, it is a never-ending, foggy attempt to "balance" something you can't even quantify in the first place, let alone measure. That is anything but 'equal.'
But if you are a member of a minority race going for a job, what the hell do you care? You win. And if you are a white male overlooked for the same job, who would listen? Go look for another job and believe it when you are told that it's all in the name of "equality."

Better yet, send in applications anonymously – no gender, race, financial status, not even a name or location. Randomly numbered applications could be sent to colleges through a neutral third party, stripped of anything remotely demographic. Accept or reject on the basis of coursework, test scores, volunteer work, community participation, extracurricular activity (no specifics, just semesters or years of participation.) Same could be done for employment.

If you think that most minorities of any kind (women, people of color, disabled, non-christian in the US) want to get a job that they are NOT qualified for simply because they are a minority.....you are nuts. I"m sure their are exceptions but in my experience, they are few and far between. ON the other hand, there are still many many white men who still "get the job" simply because the person doing the hiring (i.e., the white man) is "more comfortable" hiring someone like himself.
You are right on one point – it is illegal for the white guy to hire the other white guy simply because he's white......but given the hundreds of years that the white guys have been in charge in this country....do you REALLY believe that they havent figured out how to make it incredibly difficult to prove (in court) that they did something illegal? If you do, I got some swamp land in Florida for you.

If you think that most minorities of any kind (women, people of color, disabled, non-christian in the US) want to get a job that they are NOT qualified for simply because they are a minority.....you are nuts. I"m sure their are exceptions but in my experience, they are few and far between. ON the other hand, there are still many many white men who still "get the job" simply because the person doing the hiring (i.e., the white man) is "more comfortable" hiring someone like himself.
You are right on one point – it is illegal for the white guy to hire the other white guy simply because he's white......but given the hundreds of years that the white guys have been in charge in this country....do you REALLY believe that they havent figured out how to make it incredibly difficult to prove (in court) that they did something illegal? If you do, I got some swamp land in Florida

I suppose a murder has the right to complain about receiving the death penalty, but we still call this justice. That State is not committing murder. It's killing is sanction and in response to murder. Again, we call this justice. American society is paying its generational reparations. Germany complained about paying reparations after World War I and they militarized again. Take your medicine, America. AA is not the salt, but the alcohol for your generational wound. That said, why was there never a date set for the end of AA? I think it could end today, but to appease everyone involved, set a date like 2024 or something.

Hey Manny, When you say you are African are you from Africa? If not and you were born here you are an American plain and simple. I am from mostly German descent but do not go around saying I am German. I say I am an American.

Without racial preference, things can never be equal. If life is a 100 meter dash, then whites get a 50 meter head start compared to several different minorities, especially the one who's history in America began with 200 years of enslavement, followed by another 100 years of civil rights oppression. They still feel the affects of that history today, thorugh rampant poverty and being held down. Young, white women such as Gratz aren't being held back by the government, they're being propped up by a history of oppression. Affirmative action is a process in which we hope to correct that, and it seems Sandra Day O'Connor understood the nuance that Gratz so utterly fails to perceive in her pursuit to prop herself up at the cost of everyone else.

ben: "Without racial preference, things can never be equal ... history in America began with 200 years of enslavement, followed by another 100 years of civil rights oppression. They still feel the affects of that history today, thorugh rampant poverty and being held down. Young, white women such as Gratz aren't being held back by the government, they're being propped up by a history of oppression."

Talk about tripe.

What you're advocating isn't equality under the law. It's discriminatory racial preferences intended to give one race, as a class, more advantage than another.

Merely asserting, without proving, that minorities are "still" being "held back" by segregation (which ended 50 years ago) is useless.

This makes perfect sense to me. Why would I want our smart students denied an education to make, perhaps, less intelligent people feel better about themselves?
We want the smarter people getting educations. These children are going to create jobs here in this country. These children are our future. So, do we want people who less qualified to get an education in favor of our smarter students to promote equality? You cannot legislate equality.

She wasn't that qualified if she got denied! Truth: she was a borderline student if she was turned down. Really stellar students don't get denied admission. So my guess is that she wasn't going to get in to med school either, unless she changed her study habits and performance while she was in college. Should have spent all the time she invested in pursuing a lawsuit in pursuing her dream...she'd be a doctor today. Silly white lady.

Oh, that must be it! So when minorities are excluded from the NYPD it's because they're all unqualified!

She wasn't admitted because minorities were given a massive lead over other candidates merely because of their race. If you knew anything about the case, the school's admission policies, etc. you'd know that.

What is amazing to me is how you never mention in this article that the true rationale in current "state sanctioned discrimination" is to mitigate the egregious "state sanctioned discrimination" of our shameful past. With this omission you lack integrity and therefore credibility.

In US history, many wrongs have been committed. But that was a long time ago, and it was neither current blacks nor current whites doing the discriminating or being discriminated against. I should not be punished for the wrongs of white people from generations ago, they were not my wrongs, just as current African-Americans have no right to be compensated for wrongs committed to blacks many generations ago – current AAs are NOT the ones who deserve reparations.

Jackie, egregious discrimination continues to this day. Private companies can and do discriminate, as long as they are not working on government contracts or need a government license, as, say, a restaurant does. Every small step to end discrimination in any area, such as apartment rentals, required years of effort and multiple lawsuits. And there have been only token efforts to end discrimination in law enforcement, whether CIA, FBI, or your local sheriff or police department. Subtle discrimination is harder to see, but the chane in color and gender as you go up the corporate hierarchy is very noticeable. A very few white women, even fewer black women, and a few black males. The rest is men from European immigrant parents. And don't even look for native americans or hispanics. The only time the Supreme Court upholds a (reverse) discriminatory practice is if the school, or whatever, has been proven in previous lawsuits to have discriminated over the years since 1865 and the filing of the lawsuit. It is a long-term tilting of the balance with the hope of eventual fairness. The balance has not been equalized in 147 years, I hope the justices are correct that it will be pretty much evened out by 2035, but that is only 23 years away now.

That only matters if you believe that two wrongs make a right. Yes, there was egregious discrimination in the past. Does that make it right to discriminate the opposite direction now? I don't think so.

anthony, I have not been reading your emails as there has been too much on this blog to keep up, but what gives with your comparison between the death penalty and AA? I don't see any link. Personally, I think that the death penalty equates to murder, as both involve the conscious taking of another life, but my philosophy about AA is completely unrelated to my position on the death penalty, and I respect persons of both opposition positions.

The death penalty is killing, but it is not murder. The death penalty is earned because it is a sanction and therefore legal. Murder and discrimination are not earned, and are therefore illegal. AA is legal because society has earned it as a sanction. Thus, it is not discrimination in the sense that it is the result of arbitrary whims. The parallel between the death penalty and AA is relevant, but perhaps you have not thought of it this way before.

Actually, the children of the present are benefitting more from AA than being harmed because it planted many seeds of success. Think problems in black America are bad today?, Go back 50 years. Different problems, but still, without "Affirmative Action" how would things be today? Worse. That said, the effectiveness of AA in regard to its intent, given the radical shift in American life, means that AA can end. AA can't be used as the "perfect stick," It was a good idea in its time, but things really have subtantially changed. Calling it discrimination is like a murder calling the death penalty unfair. Yet, we call this justice.

Is it just me or does practically every single case involving a challenge to affirmative action ultimately the result of sour grapes? "Oh, I didn't get that job, but that black guy did. It can't be because I wasn't qualified enough!" or "I got rejected from my first choice college! But these couple of black or hispanic kids got in ahead of me! They couldn't have been just as qualified as me!!! There MUST be some assistance!"

Most of these cases revolve around policies with little tangible evidence that they played a factor in accepting this person over that person. Are there cases with tangible evidence? Absolutely! The New Haven firefighters case was undoubtedly a case of bias, but there was tangible evidence because they admitted to throwing the test scores out when not enough minorities performed well enough. In Gratz's case, she was offered a position on the wait list, which she rejected (if she had she would have gotten in because every person on the waiting list in 1995 was accepted), and the point system she claimed cost her admission wasn't even in place at her admission time.

Most of these cases are simply sour grapes and denial that a rejection was anything but their own fault.

Maybe you are right, maybe these are just bitter people who didn't get the job or didn't get into a school.

But you know what else? If it weren't for affirmative action, these people wouldn't be able to complain. The reason they CAN complain is because some people who are less qualified (i.e., lower test scores and grades) DO get in over them. Of course that is going to anger people. Get rid of affirmative action, allow the best to really be the ones to get the job or get into the school, and then NO ONE can complain.

That would be a valid argument, except that U of M makes people write admissions essays too. How does one quantify an essay? U of M calls the admissions process an art, not an exact science. U of M looks at things that are not just numbers, such as community service, peforming arts (drama), music (instruments / singing), atheletic ability, and a whole host of things that make the concept of being qualified meaningless because there is no legal definition. Create a legal definition, then your argument will be sound.

There is actually very strong evidence that non-minorities are discriminated against as a result of affirmative action. For example look at this website http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/02/do-medical-school-acceptance-rates-from.html.

It shows that for certain ranges of mcats and gpas, blacks have an 86% chance of being accepted to med school, while with the same credentials, Asians have a 30% chance and whites have a 36% chance. It seems grossly unfair to make your admission this dependent on your ethnic background or skin color. This is not just sour grapes, any more than blacks who agitated for civil rights were a case of sour grapes. Abolish affirmative action!

Why should she settle for the wait list if she's fully qualified for admission. She's put on the wait list so that others less qualified can move up? Maybe you would stand still for that but I wouldn't. Glad she stepped up.

The weakness in your argment is that you have not defined what qualified means. No one has ever defined qualified except for universities themselves. They reserve that power. The answer is to take that power away. Suppose students could not directly apply to college. Suppose that they all took national subject tests at the end of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade and the SAT/ACT was abolished. In fact, no more CLEP or AP crap. No more, people going to college before graduating high school. Suppose further that the national subject test scores are added up and the composite score is sent automatically to a database. Then, a computer program generates a list of schools that students may apply to based on the composite score. Colleges can set their own bar, and that would eliminate unqualified applicants, while at the same time complying with affirmative action. This kind of filtering could be done without human intervention. Then, it would be clear that those who call AA racial discrimination are actually complaining about America paying its generational reparations...not too similar to German reparation complaints after World War I. Or, if it pleases you, the complaints of a murder after learning she has received the death penalty (which is sanctioned killing, not murder).

The article said minorities get a boost. You need to look closer to the facts, she was more qualified then other non white applicants. That would be the definition of discrimination...someone getting accepted to a public university because they were less qualified, yet race determined they needed help. If you think about, what does this message send to our minorities? They deserve help and they can't help themselves? Stupid. Best scores, get in. Period.

Having been involved in grad school admissions and in hiring professors, I can tell you that "higher scores" do not equate to "more qualified". Yours is a statement that can only be made by people who don't understand how those decisions are made and how much error we can make in judging people purely on what have proven to be biased criteria. Do yourself a favor and catch up on Claude Steele's research.

If 'higher scores' do not equate to 'more qualified', then that's YOUR fault. It's YOUR job to identify the metrics that qualify an applicant for the job, and YOUR job to measure each applicant against those criteria. If you feel those criteria, ask yourself why YOU made that mistake.

The issue here is the insertion of race/gender/religion into the decision-making process, presumably to "correct" some bias that a logical process cannot identify. That's discrimination. Fifty years ago, it was "yes, these persons excel in the areas we identified as qualifiers. But, they are black, so they can't be truly qualified." That was bigoted discrimination. When you swap the race identifiers, it still is.

Admissions and hiring personnel would do society a great service if they would simply do their jobs – identify what truly qualifies an applicant for a position, and make thier decisions based soley on qualification – and stop pretending to be a moral authority that's tasked to correct a historical wrong.

I am trying to understand your point Alpha. We should not rely on test scores to grant admission because they can be decieving. But we should rely on subjective things such as?? Talk about opening the proverbial pandoras box...

Pandora's box was opened a long time ago, and we deal with the repercussions of that every day. My grade distributions tell the tale: people come in who had an easy time in high school but have not the slightest clue of how to handle themselves once they're given the extra freedom that comes with college. Grades and test scores are important as a general point in the right direction, but there's no test score that can tell us how a person is going to respond to the pressures of college, grad school or a faculty position.

"Most of these cases revolve around policies with little tangible evidence that they played a factor in accepting this person over that person." If your comment is true and there is no tangible evidence that affirmative action plays any part in deciding who gets a position then why not get rid of it? In essence you are saying don't get rid of it because we need it, and then turning around and saying there is no tangible evidence it effects anything.. Huh???

That's based on your misunderstanding how Affirmative Action works. I've been involved in both grad school admissions and hiring of professors, and I can tell you that it works on the pool side (getting qualified minorities into the pool) and not on the actual selection side. You're all fighting against a bogeyman because you don't understand the policies you're protesting against.

It's not wrong, Kelly. It's based directly on the marching orders we were given from HR for the hiring committee I just served on. They sat the entire committee in a room and went over in excruciating detail what Affirmative Action meant and what it didn't mean. Trust me when I say I learned more about those policies than any man should ever have to.

Thank for some common decency and sense... the racist diatribes were to be expected given the story, but they're still annoying. Sour grapes is exactly what is. And, this woman who is working for white female privilege is a pawn. She was selected for her gender and her Sarah Palinesque ability for photo ops. People like her and Ward Connerly drive wedges in society using the tired "black people are getting all the special privileges" strategy that even the laziest racist could confirm as a load of bull simply by looking at employment, housing and economic news.

i think it's funny how white people, and i am one, so easily forget that for hundreds of years we stacked the deck against every non-white. now, white people whine about how tough they have it. try being a slave for a decade. or having settlers come into your village, kill your men, rape your women, and take your land. affirmative action is completely legitimate until the playing field has been equalled. and it's far from it...

Who is WE? None of my family ever had slaves or were involved in any race issues, so why should I be punished by AA. I had a 3.3 GPA in High School and could not get into UCSD, but my black and latino freinds with below 2.7's got in with no problem. They also failed out and wasted all that time and student space. Before that I had many minority freinds, but now I hold a grude against many of them.

AA is not "leveling the playing field" – it is racist and wasteful. Students have the grades, or they don't. There were a lot of Asians at UCSD when I was attending. Somehow, their minority status did not keep them from studying hard and earning a place. We see this time and again. It is past time for some minorities to step up and stop whining.

What is "got in, no problem"? Did the U president come pick them up in a limo? And, you know their GPAs how? And, you followed their school careers for how long? And, you are talking what? DOZENS of black students or one or two. And, did they transfer to another school? Did they lose financial aid, maybe? First off, you sound like a stalker. I had dozens of friends in HS and can't recall the GPA of any of them. And second off, you sound like you made this up. Either you are WAY too interested in following your "friends" or else those friends never existed. I am black and got my degrees with no problem. I probably scored higher than you on my college boards. Should you have gotten in in front of me?

No doubt. Things are better. It is very good for those who are responsible and do the right thing, but not all people from the "past" are dead. That said, there should have been an end date for AA, or at least some measurable goal. True, we give some murders the death penalty, but America does not deserve the death penalty. What America needs is a pardon so it can move forward, and so we can appreciate each other's hard work and accomplishments even more.

Oh enough with the white guilt charade. Good grief. If someone is getting into school based on their skin color and not merit then they shouldn't be attending the school and you just steal a spot from someone that deserves it.

Define merit. Your statement does not exclude the possibility that whites are being extended some form of favoritism. I remember a while back (not too long ago) about an Asian man that was rejected from Harvard. His credentials were impressive. He eventually went to Columbia. But, until terms like "qualified" and "merit" have a legal defnition, universities can jerk everyone's chain as they see fit.

It is normal in an ethnic or race majority culture and society for the dominant ones to rule and for the different ones to not be "in." It is only recently that utopian Marxist ideals have supposed that smashing diverse groups of people together and forcing by law a sort of bias against bias by suppressing the majority, with not one bit of historical proof for success, but rather proof to the opposite (Roman Empire, Hapsburg Empire, British Empire, Romanoz Dynasty/Empre, Chinese Imperial dynasties, etc, that smashing diverse peoples together will result in the fall of all and long periods of mayhem and human tragedy. As much as it appeals emotionally, forcing cultures and races together and then using law to enforce acceptance has always and is now resulting in continued increases in disconnection within our society and every Western society where it is being practiced today. Non-Western nations, including African, seem to be accepted in one native race policies, with Zimbabwe and South Africa actually engaging in near genocide of whites. Our media suppresses the bad news everyday, but at some point, the reality of the failure of and the real nature of "Diversity" will become widely understood. By then, as it likely is now, it will be too late.

The Roman Empire lasted a thousand years and had millions of slaves, most of who were White. When the empire fell there was no Affirmative Action for former slaves. By your logic it should have taken another thousand years for Whites to recover..

Income tax is only one form of tax. The people you assume are getting a free ride pay plenty of taxes in everyday life. Perhaps there ought to be an idiot tax. But then you wouldn't have much to live on, would you?

Affirmative Action is the worst legislation ever. It's against meritocracy and all other good forces driving the humanity evolving for better.

WHY should rich black kids have easy admissions than poor Asian/White kids??!! BTW, look at the Blacks to Asians ratio in NBA/NFL/TV/movies/music/... The first minority president in the IVY League is Black; the first minority CEO on Wall Street is Black; the first head of NASA is Black; Nearly all corporate/university boards in America have at least a Black on it, while near-zero for Asians – even true for Google and Microsoft; ... This is absolutely unfair!!

Affirmative Action didn't promote racial harmony/diversity. Instead, it promotes racial hatred for the unfair discrimination against poor Asian/White kids. Imagine how an Asian/White waiter watches Jay-Z, Kanye West, ..., jumping up/down and hanging out with the Victoria's Secret models??!! And Jay-Z's baby picture is on the headline of CNN for a whole week!!?? And this kid needs an special, easy admission to Harvard??!!

Obama LIED – he talked all the sweet things about "removing the unfair Affirmative Action" before getting elected. Now he and his Black thug Eric Holder, both benificiary of the AA, are fighting the Supreme Court in any ways possible to keep AA alive!!

Kick Obama the liar out of the White House this fall!!!! America, you can do it!!!! HOPE for a CHANGE!!!!

Change from the negatively entrenched is neither fast nor easy. Those who HAVE seldom freely and lovingly share the power, privilege, and wealth that they obtained from a corrupt system with those who are without those same benefits. A single person can push for change, but change requires the work of many. And while there are those who want to return things back to the days of segregation or worse, harmony will be late in coming..

Let's really define what affirmative action needs to address. Right now everyone is pointing to minorities. How about women? How about the disproportionate number of people over 55 that get laid off to cut costs and can't find a job because no one will hire them due to age? Try being over 60 looking for a job with multiple degrees and being told you're over qualified? What exactly do you expect these people to retrain for? Plumbers?

Prejudices and inequality will continue while Washington and our corporations are run by white males over 50 who have easy access to Viagra but see contraception as the evil problem – which is the perpetrator? For some reason, it's never the male. They like the status quo. It's comfortable. God forbid a woman has an idea (let alone a minority) and the baby boomers have passed these ideas to their offspring. Just look at the leading GOP candidates.

How about Pensions? They are always biased towards the seniors. I was 19 and worked for a oil company for 25 years.
My coworker was 40 and worked the same amount of years. The pension was a formula based on your age and time served.
My coworker met the terms for a pension to start at 60 but because of my age I did not.

There is no such thing as truly being equal. There will always be the rich and poor. There will always be the revered and the hated. There will always be good and bad. There is only one true thing in this world, and that is balance... and we people have killed the balance.

Most African-Americans I have known who applied and have gone to Big Ten Schools and Ivy League Schools are ashamed of affirmative action and several did not even report their race when applying because they did not want to take part in a program that is nothing more than state sanctioned racism.

I believe that because of human nature it's impossible to stamp out all racial discrimination. People will always have their biases. However, I believe we should stamp out all legal discrimination to the greatest extent possible. Affirmative action is legal discrimination. It needs to be made illegal.

Ms. Gratz was very brave to fight for her case, as is this newest plaintiff. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You want equal? You got it. If you want an advantage just say so. Say you think you deserve and advantage. But don't lie and say you want equality, because if you're for affirmative action, you don't want equality, you want payback. Well guess what, I had nothing to do with the injustices against black people in this country so there is no reason I or my children should be punished. Furthermore, it's not just blacks that benefit from affirmative action, hispanics do too. Sure hispanics have been and are discriminated against, but no more so than Irish immigrants were, so should people of Irish descent get a leg up. No. The only people who have experienced an enhanced level of discrimination and racism are black people, and the only people who have experienced no discrimination (up until the advent of affirmative action), is Anglo-Americans.

Being loose with the words "equal" and "justice" only makes this debate more frustrating. Generational wrongs require generational sanctions. Take your medicine, America. Just like Germany paid reparations to Jews by making payment to Israel in the 50s, America must also pay its reparations. America is guilty, guilty, guilty (like Carl Lee Hailey in the movie "A Time to Kill"). The mountain of evidence against America makes O.J.'s look like an ant hill. Stop crying about paying your reparations. The U.S. is getting off easy (a veritable slap on the wrist). There is no scale that can ever quantify the generational effects of injustice, but I do think because America is fundamentally a different place than it was in the 60s, AA should end by no later than 2020. Hey, maybe sooner.

The cry against affirmative admission to university is bogus – nothing but racism in disguise. If Ms. Gratz and her fellow white pride travelers were truly interested in equality their first target would be legacy admissions but their silence on this issue is deafening.

Relictus, perhaps if you did not get in which a legacy admission you would have a better understanding of what you learning in your ethics classes. Try to think of it in no limit poker terms – the guy with the largest wad in his pocket at the start of the game has the best chance of walking away with the pot. If you want to know who the better player you have to even field and make them all start with the same amount of cash. Until then only a fool would think the richer one is the better player.

I see that most people have no idea how Affirmative Action works. It works on the pool side, getting more qualified minority applicants into the pool to be considered. Once those applicants are in the pool, the decision process doesn't pay any attention to their race. For whatever reason, those who don't get in keep playing to this bogeyman of unqualified minorities taking their place, and the truth is that they likely never had a place to begin with. I'll close off by pointing out one other fact, namely that students who get into top colleges through Affirmative Action-like programs perform just as well as those who, without the knowledge base to accurately judge this for themselves, consider themselves to have been more qualified.

And yet Asians, the smallest of the top 4 racial groups in the US are also the most unrepresented at the schools. Asians, unlike any other racial group, white people coming in second, face the lowest glass ceiling affect.

See my previous reply. Again, what I'm writing is based directly on what HR gave to us. We went through the entire set of policies word for word, much to our misery. It was important, though, because I also went in not fully understanding what Affirmative Action was. Unfortunately, since most people aren't drilled on the fine points as members of hiring committees, most people also don't understand what role Affirmative Action really plays in those processes. BTW, at most universities nowadays, the information regarding the diversity of the applicant pool is kept separate from the application packets themselves; I could tell who was male or female based on the applicants' names, but nothing else about their demographics made it to my desk.

This commentary talks about AF in school admissions, but AF is in place in the work place also. Particulary in civil service positions. There it has nothing to do with getting people into the "pool." I have personal experience with it and no amount of quoting of obscure studies or naming of obscure academics will trump personal experience. You seem to think that because you are educated, and have the ability to cite studies that no average person has ever heard of, that your opinions hold more weight.

My understanding of how it works doesn't come only from the studies. It also comes heavily from the HR department at my university and what we were explicitly told to do and not to do in our latest round of hiring. Specifically, we were explicitly told that our efforts needed to be concentrated on the pool of applicants, and once HR had the information regarding applicant demographics, they and they alone had access to it. We never saw any of that, and it didn't affect who we called for phone interviews, brought out to campus, or ultimately hired.

Where do we start. Adam and Eve? There was a Black Panther named Eldridge Cleaver that after much terror and maham left the country for several years. Finally he came back, and I think served some time for his crimes. He said that he would rather be in jail, here in the U.S. than be a free citizen in any other country in the world. Mohammed Ali said, after seeing how things were in Zaire said how thankful he was that his ancestors got on that boat. It is time to end Affirmative Action after over 140 years since the slaves were freed.

I agree affirmative action based on race should end. As a black lawyer, when I read the Plessy v Ferguson case holding separate but equal - 35 years after slavery ended - I asked myself how good nine presumably Christian white men who regularly attended church and presumably brilliantly intelligent ever arrive at such flawed reasoning. Now white AMericans get to understand the same tortued logic in reverse. But the principal point I want to make is slavery may have officially ended 140 years ago, but virulent race discrimination persisted well into the 1960's and in some places the 70's. I know because I lived it having been born in 1953. I graduated in 1971, the product of a segregated school system doing its best to avoid integrating even though the US Supreme Court outlawed same in Brown v Board in 1954. I got hand me down books from the white school along with typewriters and sewing machines, etc. An employee at the Parish library responded "we don't have any books on n word in politics" as I researched ma senior paper. Crosses we're burned toe doors down from me by the klan and my uncle's home was shot at. It was tough to grow up in the south despite pres Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. If slavery ended 140 years ago, why did it take lthe 1964 civil rights act to abolish discrimination in housing, voting, transportation - cause things continued to be UNEQUAL for the hundred years after slavery was deemed unlawful.

I was probably a beneficiary of affirmative action. I grew up black on welfare reared by grandparents but eventually ended up living by myself as a senior in High School. I graduated valedictorian of my highnschool class and went to a private white college. Geez, I hope I didn't take some betternacademically qualified white male or female's place with my second rate discrimination based elementary and high school education.

In conclusion, I sometimes read where my white American brothers and sisters state slavery was over a long time ago. But was it really. I think people lose sight of the day to day, month to month, years to year injustices that continued to occur openly with the backing of the state government. Just sayin...........

Scales of Justice, that's a good comment. I, a white guy born two years before you, was about to thoughtlessly write something about how affirmative action is unfair when I read your comment. It gave me pause and made me think. Figured I'd say this so you know that somebody hears you.

Since all people are equal regardless of race, why don't we throw out affirmative action in schools and try this instead:
Put tuition on a sliding scale based on intellegence and willingness to put in hard work. So a kid with a high ACT score who was in band, on the swim team, held a part time job, and volunteered at an animal shelter in high school gets into school on a full ride. A kid who did all that but had a lower score or a kid with the same score who was only in band and a community volunteer would get in and pay x amount of tuition. The kid with only the score or who had moderate grades and a bit of after-school work would come in next with a bit higher tuition, and the kid with a junk score who played one season of JV whatever comes in last paying a significantly higher price.
Colleges need to select by who has the brains and who is willing to do the work, not by skin color. If you've proven yourself to be an intelligent, hard working person while in high school, chances are you will do better in college and go on to a better career which would make the school look good and alum with good jobs are in a better position to donate to their alma mater. It makes perfect sense for both the students and the schools.

wont work. in america gifted students generally under perform because the educational system does not meet their needs. It teaches how to pass tests instead of teaching how to think. Thats part of the reason greedy idiots run wall street and the tea party.

Do you mean privileged monetarily or with intelligence or with a hard work ethic? Just because someone is very smart doesn't mean they're rich. A lot of students with high grades have worked very hard for those grades and deserve to be rewarded for their effort.

Well we'll never really know since test scores are supposed to be information closed off for public examination. I often wonder how did test scores for such "cases" become known in the first place? I teach – and I cannot even discuss a grade with another person much less the public in general. So something is very strange about the bases of these arguments if they are based on CLOSED test scores! Is someone just saying I'm white and your not and therefore my score must be higher than yours? If so – please!!

What's meant, RJ, is that working hard and being smart is enough for one group but not for another. One of the myths that America likes to hold onto is that we all have the ability to make it. The truth, supported by tons of social science research, is that biases cause people to evaluate, for instance, an argument as being stronger when it comes from a man than when it comes from a woman. In another domain, it's the same reason why the white guy stepping onto the basketball court can never get the same respect that a black guy can get, even if they perform exactly the same way.

Alpha, the danger is using generalities. Treating us all as cookie cutter examples of your preconcieved notions. No one should assume that a man can or cannot play basketball based on his skin color, and no one should assume that me or my children had a privileged life because we grew up White. That is what AF is, punishing entire groups because of the actions of some. No matter how you try to couch it, that is what it is.

Your problem here is misunderstanding the nature of the privilege. When sociologists refer to white privilege, they're not talking about everyone driving to schools in Cadillacs. What they're saying comes back to the point you're championing about personal responsibility, namely that people should be able to better their conditions through their work and perseverance. The nature of the privilege we're discussing is that that's more true for some groups than for others (the oft-referred-to glass ceiling).

If what we had was a meritocracy, everyone who was equally qualified and equally diligent would have equal standing. That isn't true, partly because that model ignores some of the truly random factors that help us to succeed and partly because it also ignores how one person or group's success affects the chances of success for another person or group. Our system is biased toward the haves and against the have-nots, and in the United States of America, women and minorities are, by and large, the have-nots.

African Americans in general will always test lower as a group because as a community they place very little emphasis on education. As an educator I know that once they leave my classroom the majority will get no direction of help at home. Its truly is a sad situation.

I completely concur with the banning of all "equitable adjustment" policies (at this point in time). I also hope that Ms. Gratz gets over this early hurdle in life and gets on with achieving all that she can and wants to achieve. If championing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative is fulfilling, go for it. But don't look back with regret at having not pursued a path because a hurdle was in front of you...redirect....go there now. Don't set yourself up to feel "denied" the rest of your life. That is the exact thinking that perpetuated affirmative action long after it was reasonable. And as to the court thinking of a specific person, gender, race, individual when it decides a case – that is 180 from what we want – the court should be blind, as should admissions policies, promotion initiatives, etc. Only then will equal be equal.

In my view, any serious-minded person who wants to examine with an open mind the question of whether affirmative action is an appropriate policy in a nation that values "Equal Justice Under the Law" owes it to himself or herself to read Justice Thurgood Marshall's opinion on the famous University of California v. Bakke case of 1977-1978. Here's a link:

The extent of suffering in this country caused by economic inequality that is historically race-based, and which leads to deprivation of opportunity is a disgrace. When someone comes up with a way to right the injustices of the past which established the framework for our present caste system then we can address "equal justice" as it might serve someone from an advantaged group.

No one can ever right the past...not in any of our lives. The past is what it is and can't be changed no matter how awful. Its up to each of us as individuals to make the best of it and see if something good can come of something bad. Look forward and not behind to be prosperous is my motto. When running a race if the runner looks side to side or behind him, he will surely lose. The winner will focus forward to the finish line and leave the others in his dust.

They will not be happy until this is all theirs......canabalism, rape and pillage ......look anywhere they dominate, Africa, Haiti, new orleans, urban areas etc.....you think it's all decayed by a hidden hand or will the occupants ever be accountable??

Do you want your surgeon to be admitted to medical school by affrimative action? No best person for the job, regardless of race. 'Person should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of thier skin.'

Just so I'm clear then: you appear to be saying that, since a doctors of particular racial heritage made mistakes, all doctors of that racial heritage should be tarred with that same brush. Wow. That seems particularly ridiculous.

As ideal as this would be, "equal justice under law" will never happen. They'll always be countered by four more words, "Sins of the Father". Someone will always be able to say "well, my great great great grandfather was discriminated again because he was irish, or chinese, or italian, or black, so I need stuff from you!".
Were do we draw the line? Can we?

Fonzie, cool has been around a long time but Prejudice has been around a longer time. Its going to be a round a long time. So, unless you can build a motorcycle time machine, go back and stop the slavers from bringing people to America, stfu!

Affirmative action is a form of racial discrimination, as would any system be that puts a slight preference on one group or groups, but it is one that attempts to promote diversity and opportunities for groups that, only some decades ago, did not have those opportunities. Minorities of any gender, and even White women, had been receiving the short end of the stick and, as some would argue, still are. Negative applications of racial discrimination had been in places for almost 400 years (about 200-300 of years remained practically unchallenged), yet 50 something years of affirmative action is bad and anti-white? Oh please.

I will gladly clarify. You being your statement with the assertion that AA is a form of racial discrimination. Thus, you would be in agreement with a murder who says that receiving the death penalty is unfair. Yet, we call this justice. Ironic, is it not. Others flip this situation around and say "two wrongs don't make a right." However, the difference between murder, killing in the line of duty, and the death penalty is that one form (murder) is not sanctioned and a terrible remdy to problem. Because AA's ultimate intent (subtext) is social reparations for a generational problem, it is disingenuous to call it racial discrimination. It's like calling the death penalty murder.

Yes Kelly, many people will post past instances of racial discrimination (lynchings in the South, laws against miscegenation, Gentleman's Agreement [subtle discrimination],..I'm sure the list will go on) as an argument for why these preferences should continue.

My comment, or rather query, is did Ms. Gratz see beyond her case when organizing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and realize it should apply to more than that university but to public schools throughout the state. That not only should everyone have an equal chance to get a good education but that education should be equal to any other offered by other schools in the state. That for everyone to be treated equal under the law they needed to be treated equal in all parts of life. Have the same opportunities to learn, same opportunities to find jobs, same opportunities to have a good life for themselves and their families. Without that type of equality, Equal Under The Law has no meaning.

Cry me a river. So, you studied math, right? This means you must understand the differences b/w a static and dynamic analysis. Obviously not. The effect of discrimination are long-term, my friend. Equal means equal only if these long-term effects are considered. The fact of the matter is that if you forced all white people to work for minorities for hundreds of years, then whites would never catch up. It would take a policy like affirmative action to give them a chance. This is precisely what whites did to minorities. I agree with the notion that equal should mean equal, but only if we consider both the short-term and long-term effects of SLAVERY!

Good grief Adam go to Africa and leave us please.....blacks are not equal because they earn that distinction with these articles and pandering.....how many thousands of years will the whine continue......until we utter the phrase....you damn dirty apes and we find the liberty statue buried??

What illogic. You're saying that slavery made black people dumb 2 centuries later?? You are either smart enough to get in the university or your not. No "dynamic" analysis is needed. Stop blaming the "white man" for your lack of drive and intellect. The white man owes black people NOTHING.

Your'e the one full of illogic. Slavery ended in 1865, not two centuries ago. And it had existed in this country for far more than a century prior to that. After it ended, blacks continued to be treated as second class citizens with few opportunities. If you think generation after generation of limited opportunities doesn't have a lingering effect, then you are a f00l. In fact, blacks did not get even close to equal opportunities until the late 1960s. That is ONLY one generation ago. That means today's young adult blacks were the first generation to be raised in an even remotely "equal" environment. But racists still abound.

Have you studied history...Do you know how many people groups have been enslaved? ...More than you can count. And they weren't coddled and babied afterward yet they recovered and prospered. Its time to quit looking back and begin looking forward, its time to quit babying – and rather say its time to grow up. When hard things happen in life it is always best to let it go and move on...move forward. No one that keeps looking to the past will ever prosper.

duke: Rational America, indeed the rational world, does cry a river over 'mentalities' such as yours. Defending ignorance,fear, guilt and the attendant ugliness simply doesn't fly. Technologically, we're in the 21st Century, ethically, morally, spiritually and socially, we're stuck in the 8th Century – and no offense intended to those citizens.

Such as mine????? I am commenting on an article and excessive pandering, you attack me. Crack aids and prisons are bottom lines. black on black cr ime remains rampid....nothing said here can dilute that reality.....they need to face their cultural realties and stop blaming others.....it's beyond old

USCapitalizt or we could give your future generations the same opportunity blacks had for the last 200 years go get into the NFL. We can throw you out into the street penniless, disenfranchise you, give you third rate schools, lynch a few of your relatives because they glanced at a black women the wrong way, force you to the back of the bus, forbid you from eating in most restaurants, let you work only in the lowest paying jobs and in 200 years from now your white kids will make up most of the NFL.

Your point flies in the face of facts. The Roman Empire lasted thousands of years and enslaved millions, mostly Whites. Yet when Rome fell those former slaves went on to great things, without the help of affirmative action.

Adam, if you don't know the REAL history of SLAVERY I mean the REAL history not the watered down BS taught in school to make it out that black people have a monopoly on slavery, but if you don't know the actual full history of slavery, don't talk about it. And seriously, using it as your argument is a failure.

"when we get away from those four simple words..." as if we ever got close to equal justice under law. As a woman in this country ms. Gratz will make 70%-80% of what a white male, if she was an African american woman she would be making even less. I personally think she should have been asking for inclusion under the affirmative action policies.

Total correlation-causation fallacy. When the time women traditionally take out of their careers to raise children is taken into account, this discrepancy almost completely disappears. You cannot take two different people who have not walked the same paths in life, point to 2 characteristics, gender and pay, and conclude that one caused the other.

It would be NO less illogical to conclude that the pay rate created the gender of the worker, but people can see the inanity of that right away.

I agree that there should be equal opportunity for any citizen. So far as "Equal Justice under the Law" goes, I am doubtful that the human mind can cope with it. If you ask two well educated reasonable people about the "justice" in 10 completed criminal cases, you might get 80% agreement. Human emotion and experience will cause disagreement in the other 20%. Juries, in particular, are selected not for their rationality but for their ignorance of the details of the case, their expected emotional response and other reasons not remotely connected to "justice". Judge's decisions are rarely based on "justice" but on his interpretation of the law which is a quite different thing.

I am all for a law that prevents racial discrimination. I am tired of seeing people being passed over for someone else that is less qualified, but a minority. We live in society that makes everyone a winner. No one fails. That is one of our greatest faults. The reason we fail is to learn how to do it better. You do not learn anything if it is just handed to you. We fall so that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.

Well, you see, that's because Jennifer thinks the fault and benefit is with others, not herself. That would be a contradiction that her ego could not afford to swallow. She and others like her have to be the victims. Everone else is just a cry baby.🙂

"Equal Justice Under Law" What a concept. In the hours and days to come many will post here citing past instances of non-equal justice under the law and claiming that it justifies current non-equal justice. What a tangled web we weave when we get away from those four simple words...

You cannot have the present without the past. The concept of "now" is so short that the past will always dominate it. Essentially then, past is present because what we preceive in the "now" is virtually the past. What truly varies is people's ability to conceptualize and appreciate time. Some have short memories or live in a perpetual state of denial about the past. They say things like "that was so long ago" and such, but we still allow Native Americans to have reservations and avoid paying some taxes. Heck, the University of Michigan lets Native Americans go to school tution free. Why though? The mutual agreement to ceed the land in exchange for free tution was "so long ago," right? What is more, some people have a tendancy to isolate events by disconnecing them from their consequences. Worse, they tend to comparmentalize those consequences and deem them irrelevent to what the perceive as "now." It's a sick cycle.

You cannot compare situations of other minorities with those of Native Peoples. The United States signed treaties and binding contracts with Sovereign Nations of Native Americans. The government immediately "forgot" those contracts using military force and genocide to exterminate those people and take their land.

You may not want me to use Native Americans to illustrate "the past" and the notion of something happening "so long ago," but my general point is still valid. Fine, we could talk about the the Jewish Holocaust. The point is, people's view of the passage of time is relative. I do not think AA (a generational answer to a generational problem) should continue, but I also think murderers (metaphorically) should not be taken seriously when they complain about getting the death penalty (so to speak). We ought to promote something we can all get behind like a national, legal definition of "qualified" for college admissions. Why no one talks about his is beyond me.

Anthony, we can't have any such standard because there is no objective qualifier for people on the margins. Universities and businesses all have different mission statements and need to be able to hire people and accept students who can help them to meet their mission statement. There are de facto standards for who can't get into colleges (GPA below a certain level or SAT scores too low), but as we get close to the borderline for what's acceptable and what isn't, the criteria become nebulous of necessity.

The big problem as far as all of these cutoffs is that they are, in large part, arbitrary. Treating them as guidelines is both sensible and desirable. Treating them as though they have greater discriminability than they actually have, though, is neither.

Alapha, gentle friend, your basic argument that "we can't" because "there is no" is a logical fallacy. Connecting the notion of margins and mission statements does not rectify your logical fallacy or support your argument. In fact, using "de facto," and using GPA is a fallacy because high school is not standardized. Look, the international space station did not exist once either, but now it does because people worked on it. If we, together, worked on defining a legal definition of "qualified" for college admssions, we could start talking more about working togther, rather than spending time on all on devisive issues. My suggestion is to make national, standardized subject tests at the end of each year of high school (9th, 10th, 11th, 12th) and use those scores exclusively. That way, there is no need for the SAT/ACT. GPA, as we know, means nothing because high school is not standardized. Now what I need to know is, are you with me?😉

No, high schools are not standardized, and neither are colleges. Even the professors within a single department have some variability in our standards unless our chairs decide otherwise. Still, nationwide standardization is something that's not only impossible to achieve but even undesirable to achieve. Setting a hard cutoff for what's designed to be a probabilistic model doesn't make sense, and it makes even less sense to say that all schools should have that same cutoff when the needs of the communities they serve are so different.

I do not think standardizing high school is the solution, nor do I feel that standardizing college is the answer. I am talking about stadardizing end of year subject tests and administering them in the same year that a high school student (or home schooled student) takes a particular class. Perhaps the model should be change from a probabilistic one to deterministic one. After all, a year should be sufficient prep time for the test. Teachers will not have to teach to the test because taking the tests would not be mandatory. Those who choose to go into the work force, military, or a community college first can happily dismiss the end of year testing process altogether. People don't want injustice, but when you ask them to define 'merit' or 'qualified' they balk. What exactly do you suggest then, sir? I am not proposing hard cut offs, just a graduated merit system that says "yes, you scored high enough so you may apply to Big Top University", or "no, you did not score high enough to apply to those universities over there, but you can still apply to these universities over here." Universities could still set their own standards. This is the very essence of fairness. Do you have an alternative that I should be considering?

What university would be happy to put itself at the bottom of that hierarchy? They're all competing for the best faculty and the best students they can get given their resources. Moreover, what students would apply to that university, knowing that their degrees are going to be seen as worthless as a result?

We've forgotten the original reason for testing intelligence in the first place, namely to figure out who needed more help than others. These days, we have schools losing money and resources if their students have low standardized test scores, and that's backward. Those are the schools that need more help instead of less, and if we'd find ways to rectify the discrepancies at the lower levels of education, there'd be no need to worry about the imbalances which emerge later on.

Not to raise a new issue altogether, but there are those students, like my daughter, who excelled in AP courses throughout HS (both public and college prep), and had a very high GPA, but did poorly on her SAT. She did well is ES, JHS, and HS because she studied for hours, after theater, athletics, and other curricular activities, to complete her homework and study. I was a lousy student, did no extra curricular activities, but did very well on my SAT as I could calm down and focus for that. She would seize up during standardized tests. She did not get into the colleges she wanted, I suspect because of her SATs. She was on he Dean's List through her 4 years in the CA State System. Alpha, how do you suggest we deal with issues such as this? I am not bringing race or AA into the issue because I don't believe it was an issue in her applications.

I'm part of a growing group of college educators in favor of deemphasizing the standardized testing or eliminating it altogether. From what you described, it sounds like your daughter would be the type of student who'd do very well in most any college, and putting undue emphasis on the tests creates holes for potentially great students to fall through. How much weight the SAT and ACT have in the admissions process varies from school to school, but IMO, we should pay at least as much attention to the other parts of an applicants' packet.

I'm part of a growing group of college educators in favor of deemphasizing the standardized testing or eliminating it altogether. From what you described, it sounds like your daughter would be the type of student who'd do very well in most any college, and putting undue emphasis on the tests creates holes for potentially great students to fall through. How much weight the SAT and ACT have in the admissions process varies from school to school, but IMO, we should pay at least as much attention to the other parts of an applicants' packet.

Thank you for your response. My daughter is as bright as I am, but I didn't care about rules and studying, and could pull off doing my homework (sort of) on the bus on the way to school. She(inherently) would not go to school until it was done, and then would not go to school until she had it in her backpack...and I wish I could say it was my influence, but it was not. But I also think her need to be totally prepared meant that she feels insecure about more abstract tests. More in align with the issues that this blog has been discussing, however, is the fact that I took off time(a decade) from work to tutor at her elementary schoo and be invlved in her JHSl. Her teacher in 4th grade, who probably precipitated her to be more responsible than I ever did, once chastised a Hispanic student (while I was there), telling her that she had stolen one of the "treat" candies, and that if her mother bothered to come to school and be the least involved in her education like "Nicole's mother was" she wouldn't steal and might learn something. The teacher gave Nicole motivation not to fail, but took away any chance or motivation for her classmate to achieve. Expectations from others and oneselves create failure or success.

My husband was a developmental psychologist, and I suspect you knew him. I appreciate your reasoned discussion on the topic of AA, and will not digress again.

The SAT/ACT is a scam. My national, standardized, end of year subject tests would look for understanding of real principles and concepts that should have been covered during the course of a school year (given a specific subject). No tricks, no gimics, just the subject at hand. Hey, most kids already takes finals in high school, so all they need to do is take the grand finale too. Shame about your daughter and all, but I'm sure she got an education just the same. However, eliminating standardized testing without defining "qualified" would not alleviate grudes and suspsicions about the entire college admissions process. My solution begins to address that problem. Do you have any ideas about defining 'qualified' so that people will stop complaining about fairiness? I truly want to hear what you have to say.

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